Is it possible to see where the book ends up after you have sent it to the person who requested it?  For instance if they send it to someone else, will it show up on the passport stamps page.  Sorry if this has been answered before but I couldn't find it anywhere and was just curious. :)

Yes, it will track it and the info will be available for you to see on your Transaction Archive. I just looked at a book I sent out about 6 months ago, the member has since posted it  and mailed it, and the information is listed under the footprint on that book.

You got me curious too, here is one that has really traveled:

Great, thanks for that info!

So far my record for most passport stamps was an Anita Black Novel (the killing dance, i think) that had 8 or 9 stamps and like a bajillion miles traveled. I think it's awesome to see that kind of thing. Imagine how much money people saved not having to buy that book? Plus, it's like the sisterhood (paperbackswaperhood?) of the traveling book (pants?)

Wow! i didn't realize we could do that on books in the TA...so I went and checked. Having sent out almost 1200 books over the past three years I thought the books I'd sent out from 2005 would have been all over the country...not so! The vast majority of those (I'd say at least 90%) I sent out in my first couple of months seem to go nowhere after I sent them. They were brand new books that I had read once and then listed here when I joined, so they had a lotta life left in them. That kinda makes me sad.

The longest one I found in reviewing just the first couple hundred was six additional stops:

there are many books that I have received here that I haven't read and sent on yet...PBS has fed my book addiction where I went from maybe 30 books on my TBR shelf to nearly 400.  I need to stop ordering books (I'm trying to put them on my RL vs WL) and read more!

I realized the sme thing about books I'd sent on and ones I've received.  Got here or there and stopped.  Waiting to be read.  Then there's the trilogy that I sent books 1 and 2 to a member and sent book 3 to someone else but the person who got my 1 and 2  also got my 3 after a couple more stops!  Now that's weird.  It's a fairly common book!  What are the chances?  And why didn't those chances occur when I try to win the lottery?

Ruth

Wow, I didn't think it was in the TA because every one of the books I've checked in the past only had the one stop. I did find a couple with another leg after some digging, but I am surprised at the number that didn't go beyond the receiver. Guess  they have TBRs like mine and it will take a while for them to move on.

Yep, I have a 500+ TBR too, and I certainly can understand how books can sit on one person's shelf for awhile. I guess I just didn't realize that it would be such a high percentage that did so! I do re-post about 95% of the books I get here, so even though they may sit there for a few months or even years, they do eventually get sent on. I mean, we're talking books I sent out more than 3 years ago....probably (I'm guessing) some of them were sent to people who are no longer members anymore, too.

Cheryl

Just remember that if you send the book as part of a deal (not for credit) or if it gets totally taken off a shelf and re-added later the history gets wiped clean...(it's like it's a book you're adding for the first time.) some of those books that have stopped circulatiing when you see the footprint may still be circulating!  :)

It's neat to see where they've been! 

im also finding that alot of the books i send out are just...stopped somewhere, even a highly wishlisted book! Maybe people lend them out to other friends...or just dont read quite as quickly as I find myself reading! :) I love love love that feature though...

I've gotten many books here that didn't make it back into the "system".  Why?  Because sometimes I order them for my sister-in-law who is disabled and loves to read and I don't ask for them to be returned because ...... well, I consider them a "gift" not a loan.  She lives in another state and loves to receive a box of books from me.  And my husband is a history buff with an extensive personal library and I've gotten many books here that will be kept forever.  Some books I just pass on to friends.  Lots make it back into the system, but many do not. 

Remember - when you send out a book, it's not a requirement to post it back into the PBS system.  It now belongs to the new owner to do as they wish with it.

Oh, right, Terri...I absolutely know that! I've ordered a few books for family members and a few for my Keeper shelf from here.  It just seemed odd that so many of these books (which were mostly just mass market paperbacks) didn't get passed on. I never keep those and generally just pass them along when I'm done--they're cheap to ship and mostly fairly quick reading. Usually if I'm gifting books or getting them for my keeper shelf, they're hardcovers.

But yes, as you say, there is no obligation whatsoever to re-post books you get here! I guess I was just surprised that so very many of those books didn't go anywhere else. I reckon it's also possible that they just "lost" the passport stamps too, if the receiving member didn't add them to their TBR List or anything to repost later, and just reposted it when they were done by typing in the ISBN. The system then would have no way of knowing that it was the same book they got.

Back in '05, PBS didn't have a lot of these cool features like being able to put the book on your bookshelf on hold and that sort of thing. Yeah...the more I think about it, the more that makes sense.

Cheryl

I reckon it's also possible that they just "lost" the passport stamps too, if the receiving member didn't add them to their TBR List or anything to repost later, and just reposted it when they were done by typing in the ISBN. The system then would have no way of knowing that it was the same book they got.

Actually, I had deleted a book from TBR and my bookshelf that I received from another member (I had given it to a friend).  Someone gave me a bag of books and there was another copy of it.  It was a WL book, so I reposted it using the ISBN, and the passport stamps showed up from the original copy that I had received.  So I sent out the same book, different copy, but same ISBN, and PBS kept the original info from a prior transaction!  I was pretty amazed.  What a smart system!