what do I do if no one wants to swap any of my books?   I started off good at swapping books, but now I'm suppose to buy credits?   What if I don't want to buy any credits?   what now?

it looks like you have some books that are common and probably have multiple copies in the system.

start asking friends and family for books they don't want any more.  search for some books at garage sales or other sorts of book sales.  double check your personal library, are there books you could post that you don't want any more?

another option is to create bundles in the book bazaar...take a few books by the same author and offer them for a credit or two (depending on how many are in the bundle).

If you need to buy credits, find someone in the bazaar that will sell them to you cheaper than buying them here.

just a few ideas to get you started

You only have 13 books listed.  All common books that're heavily posted in the PBS system so it'll take some time for your copies to make their way up the FIFO lines.

You definitley need to get some more books to swap, the more you have on your shelf the better the odds that one gets ordered.  Plus, you can offer deals in the book bazaar easier with more books for people to choose from.

you can always run a deal in the book bazaar -- 2 books for 1 credit or 3 books for 2 credits seem like popular deals.  if you do this, make sure you highlight what type of books you have on your shelf.

also, you only have 13 books posted and some of those (nora roberts, mary higgins clark) are highly posted.  do you have any other books that you can post?

thirdly, a lot of people will hit up yard sales and used books stores, library sales, etc, looking for wishlisted books that are cheap.  if you have internet on your cell phone or something, you can always look up a specific ISBN while you are out shopping, and if you find a book that is $1 or less, that happens to be wishlisted, you can always do that.

good luck!

Maria, you only have 13 books available on your bookshelf and most are written by bestselling authors with many copies in the system. You could try a *sale* in the book bazaar to generate a few credits :)  Good luck!

ETA - I'm too slow!  Well, at least there's a consensus on what should be done!

I usualy trade my heavily posted books in Box of Books deals. But 13 is kind of a low # to join that.

I would do some research on what's WL and hit the local thrift stores.  I would also buy a couple of my cheaper WL books to read and post and get me by while my other books work their way up FIFO. I also generally keep a credit buffer for WL books.  I don't know if you have enough books to really run a deal.  But it's worth a shot.  Adding an extra book or two doesn't up the postage that much and it earns you some credits.

If you don't want to spend money to add books to your shelf,  just wait a while...  most members have many books requested when they first join, only to find the requests dwindle after a while, but eventually they do get requested.  I have listed some books I thought would never be requested and they finally are.

Also,  go to spread the word and print out some flyers or bookmarks to give people to get some referral credits.

I have a similar situation - not enough requests to fill my credit needs. I'm going to take a bunch of the books that have a LOT of copies posted to the local UBS and trade them in for credit, then get wish listed books with that credit. :) Gets them out of my house, AND gets me books that more people will request!

You can put your books on your reminder list to see how many are currently available in the system.  It doesn't tell you how often they are ordered, so it can't help in an estimate of when the books might be ordered.

Buying credits from the Book Bazaar is pretty easy if you have paypal.  Right now people seem to offer credits at $2.50 to $2.75 which is not a whole lot more than it cost to mail a book.  But if you enjoy going to book sales, you are getting a credit and sending someone a book they want, which is a little nicer :).  You can also mail using DC (purchased from PBS) to get your credit when scanned instead of when the reciever marks recieved if you need the credit right away.

If you have DVDs or CDs you would like to get rid of, you may join those sister sites.  Credits you earn on those sites can be transferred to PBS if you prefer to get books rather than DVDs or CDs.

I'm going to take a bunch of the books that have a LOT of copies posted to the local UBS and trade them in for credit, then get wish listed books with that credit.

This is such a fabulous idea!

I would sugest something, but every last idea I had was taken so to avaoid being repeticious, I won't say anything!