Quick question...  I have an RC about no writing in books, including dedications in the front.  Someone accepted my RC, but when I received the book, I realized that they had just ripped the front page out since it probably had a dedication.  I guess they thought...presto!...it fits my RC.  Only problem is the damage to the interior of the book when the page was ripped out.  I can almost see the spine in one area and the rest is moderately to heavily weakened.  Is this cause for an RWAP?  Or should I just suck it up and add to my RC ("Please don't just rip the offending page out")?  I couldn't remember seeing this mentioned in the help documents.

The book guidelines for "Swappability" here state:

No torn or chewed/gnawed pages
No loose or missing text pages

and

Binding: Must be intact, with no separation on the inside or outside of the book

and they don't specify "text" pages only on the torn pages.  It also sounds like the binding is affected.  So that would mean that your book is an unpostable, and therefore cause for a RWAP.  Looks like they took a postable book and made it an unpostable to try to meet your RC... *sigh*

I disagree, it says no missing text pages. If the page was ripped out, then it is missing, and falls into the no missing text pages rule.

I think it is postable.

I guess we could disagree on whether or not a torn page that also happens to be missing falls into which rule ... but generally, in the forums in the past, torn pages are pages that are present in the book, but torn.

My library completely removes the page from the beginning of the book where they have put their bar code, when they withdraw books, and I feel these are completely postable, as the page that is missing is not a text page.

Pages can be removed without hardly being noticible. THOSE I think are fine. But what you are saying? Nope!

Yeah, I gotta agree with Amy.  I think the text page/ non text page issue is one of those grey areas (how do you know if it had text or not when it is missing?). But I think the manner in which it was removed, being that it was carelessly torn out as opposed to carefully removed, pushes it into unpostable territory. Why would a torn page make a book unpostable, but a torn out page not make a book unpostable? Especially since it damaged the spine. If you could hardly tell the page had been removed I could see arguing that it was postable, but not in this instance.

Sounds like it has damaged the binding, and if it has, then that makes it unpostable. You need to determine how much damage and if it is sincerely damage to the binding. Is the cover completely attached? Is this the first page? Is the following page merely loosely attatched because of the previous page having been torn out?

You say you can "almost see the spine in one area and the rest is moderately to heavily weakened". I can understand the rest being moderately to heavily weakened, and would have to say that it is still postable, because even tho it is weakened if is still attached. The part I don't understand is how you can "almost" see the spine in the one area? I mean, is there a slit that's very slim and you can almost see thru it? Since I don't think you can make paper in a book "almost see thru" any more than you can be "almost prego, you either are or you aren't", you either can see thru or you can't. And if you can only almost see thru, then it is STILL attached, and that is postable. The rules mention nothing about a binding being weak. You must be able to SEE the binding between the pages or between the cover and the page, and not just a tiny portion of an inch, while it doesn't give amounts, Most would agree that pinhole amounts are still intact.

So, IMHO, which can very easily be ignored, I believe it is still postable. And as a side point, you don't know for certain that they removed the page just to get around your RCs, altho it does certainly look like it, but it is possible for it to have come from a library that does remove the first page as mentioned to remove their little scanner things.It doen't have to look like an ex-library book either to be one. I've gotten some really nice looking books from our library and the ONLY way you can tell is on the page where they have the little electronic code bar. And if they removed that page, you'd never know it.

So, while it's unlikely, it's possible, that they aren't the ones that removed that page. It could have even been the owner before them that didn't want to see the insignia from the first owner, that's possible too, but then they found PBS and said, HEY! What's all those books doing on my shelf collecting dust! Let's post them and get some new ones! Just thinking with my fingers :)

I can tell you honestly, that if I thought I could carefully remove the blank page in the front of the book with the insignia, and I'm sure my hubby could, he's very good with an exact-o knife, I'd cut that page out in a heartbeat. It's not a text page, and once it's out, your RCs are met, so I wouldn't be surprised at all to see you get several books that are missing the front fly-page. Just saying is all.

I have to agree with Sianeka, this page was TORN from the book. If they had neatly removed the page so it wasn't noticable and it didn't damage the book, then they might have been able to sneak it by, but a torn out page is a torn page and I would consider it unpostable. There is no way to determine if it had text on it because it is missing so the assumption should not be to apply the missing page rule IMO since you don't have enough information to go by, but it is definitely torn so that rule should apply.

I do agree that it is an issue that has been hashed out in the forums a lot, I don't agree that the concensus has been that the book was postable. I can't see how ripping out a damaged page should make an unpostable book postable.

IMO, it's all about how the page is removed, but even the cleanly removed flyleaf pages I've seen leave a slight gap where you can see binding.  I'm not sure there's any way to remove a page without being able to see the place on the binding where it used to be, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there will be any damage done to the binding or that any subsequent pages will become loose because of the gap.  I realize this isn't very helpful, but I'm pretty well on the fence on this one.  If the page was cleanly removed, it didn't damage the binding or loosen any other pages, I doubt if I'd RWAP it, but I'm not sure I'd be willing to send it to someone.