I bought the postage through the PaperbackSwap system. My daughter and I had a miscommunication. We both thought the other was bringing the books to the Post Office. Postage had been printed and packages had been wrapped. But orders got cancelled. First time that ever happened, so I have no idea what to do. Can postage be refunded or do I just count it lost?

Once a wrapper has been printed the oorder can't be cancelled. I'm pretty sure you are out on the postage.

Thanks for the quick answer.

Whenever I have postage that hasn't been used -- like for letters and small packages -- I affix a new label (printed or written out by hand) with a new address over that original address.  You can take it to the PO to get the $0.00 label needed for "stale" postage. 

I do this instead of cutting out the postage to affix to a different package.  I guess the post office thinks you are trying to reuse postage if you do it this way. 

I've never had a problem getting rid of my postage mistakes this way.

Was the request cancelled or did it go past the mail by date and time out?  If you printed the label and marked it mailed by the deadline than it should not have been cancelled. If that's the case then you need to contact PBS and report this glitch because once you access their address it can only be cancelled by PBS.  If the requestor PMd you and asked you to cancel after you paid for postage than you can say " I can't cancel, I've already paid for postage" and that's that.  They can repost the book if they don't want it anymore. 

If you didn't mark it mailed on time than I guess you can take it to the PO the next time you get a book order and see if they'll let you reuse the postage.  They'd have to update the mailing date as they use this to track mailing times.  If you didn't mark it mailed on time then you need to contact the other person before mailing the book off to them.  If a book isn't marked mailed on time, the system will automatically reorder a book if there's another one available.