How long do you wait for a person to respond to a book request? 

Janice,

If this is a book you've requested there are 5 days until the request is passed to the next person in the que.  If you were to cancel now, your request would be given back to the same sender and the 5 day clock starts over.

  There are only 3 copies posted so I've been afraid they would get ordered before I receive a response then lose my chance to get copy.

Since I requested on Saturday your saying it will time out Thursday?  Then it should roll over to the next fifo in line.  I have to put my account on hold

Thursday what happens to my request then?

Depending on when Saturday you requested it, it will either time out Wednesday or Thursday.  If your request is still pending when you put your account on hold, you will still get the book if it gets accepted by a sender.

If you cancel and re-request it'll just give the request to the same person and take longer to get to the next person.  Unless you request a completely different ISBN.

There really isn't anything you can do to speed things up since the first person in line is given 5 days to respond and you can't request the next book in line with this one pending and go right back there if you cancel and reorder. The request will roll to the next person at around 3 am the night after 5 full days have passed (that puts it to 3am thrs night/Fri morning).

Going on Vacation Hold shouldn't affect the request at all. You can request books at any time while on Vacation Hold so this should just continue on being resubmitted until it is fulfilled. Nut I wouldn't worry about it until the book times out, there's stil plenty of time for the request to be accepted.

Ok, I want to get this right.  Let's say there are 3 books in the system.  I request the book and get the #1 book in the FIFO list.  Now, while I am waiting the 5 days someone else orders the book.  Wouldn't that order go to the next person in the FIFO list?  And so on and so on?  If so, it is conceivable that by the time my original request timed out, the other two copies of the book in the system could be gone.  Is that how it works?  I haven't really thought about that scenario before.  I'm just curious if that's how it would work.

Katie, I think that technically you are right: hypothetically you could wait while all of the copies get snapped up.  I don't think that happens often though.  (**As I ponder it over** That's interesting.  I have never thought about it before. )

There's always the wishlist...wouldn't you then be number one?  You could always explain the issue to TBTB if it had to go to wishlist with a line, and they could see the timed out request-putting you at the front.  Maybe?

Yes Kate that is how it works

Actually, this just happened to me. :-( There was 1 mmpb copy of "The Handmaid's Tale" at the time I placed my order. Then a few more copies got posted. The first sender in FIFO let it expire after 5 days (angry, because I want to use this book in the Goodreads Seasonal Challenge for Group Reads). In just the last week, there has been a short WL line for it, and copies have come and gone. Presumably, some of those people are going to get their copy before I get mine. Right now there is 1 copy available in the system.