I'm one of those people who keeps my account on hold most fo the time because I have more credits than I can use. Based on some comments here, I decided I should release the hold more often in order to clear out my stock of WL books to keep things moving. Now I find half of them are timing out. No real complaint, I'm  not in any hurry so I'll just let them pass through as many wishers as need be, but just adding my voice to the chorus noticing there seem to ba a lot of inactive accounts. My theory is that people are getting burned out from constantly mailing out books only to find the books they want have long wishlists. I'm not sure it's a solution, but I find when I'm on hold for a few months when I release the hold I'm inundated with requests because I've been moving up the FIFOs while on hold. That's good, because it "bunches up" the mailing activity, fewer trips to the PO with more books. The last few trips to the PO I had shopping bags with 20-30 packages to mail. For my own WL when I get frustrated waiting, I buy from abebooks.com. Not as cheap as PBS, but not bad, I just ordered 6 books off my WL for an average of $3.90 per book.

You would probably get more WL books here if you filled up your WL. 22 books isn't much.  The more lines you get into, the more WL offers you are likely to get. 

I actuallly have 1 of your WL books but I think it's  unpostable.

Mary's advice is very good.  I got the same advice recently and I kinda scoffed at it at first but beefed up my wishlist to a little over 50, and had an offer within a week.  There are many books I'd like to read that either have one or two people on a wishlist, or have many copies.  I have the opposite problem of not having enough books to offer yet (gotta read some of my copious shelf first) in order to get more credits for the books I want.  I have also noticed that the biggest waiting lists are for new books since it takes some time for people to buy them, read them, and then post them. 

Some books move slowly.  I have a series that I rarely receive offers on, and some of them were wished for in January 2007.  Other wislist lines move more quickly.

I'm dittoing the make a longer wishlist suggestions.  I usually have around 190 on my wishlist and it varies from several offers a week to about one a month, depending on the month.

This is also the time of year that lots of books roll over or time out.  Post office lines are long, and folks are too busy to check in. 

Do think about putting your WL on Auto-request and your bookshelf on vacation hold.

And now is a great time to beef up your wishlist.  Although we do see more transactions time-out as the holidays keep members busier than anticipated. 

BUT after the first of the year, members read all those lovely books they received as Christmas presents and post them to PBS.  January and Febuary are often good months for seeing wishlist fulfillments 

I'm not sure I understand what you all are saying. If I had more books on my wishlist, I would get more offers disproportional to what chance would predict? How would that work?

Well, one thing you could do is, if you do not mind which binding of a book you receive, is to place all different bindings on your Wish List. There may even be more than one paperback version of some of the books on your Wish List. For example, All Clear has a paperback version with 78 wishers, but the hardcover version on your WL has 175.

So, if you do not care about paperback vs. hardcover, then you may get wish list books faster by wishing for all the ISBN versions, or at least, all the print ISBN versions.

I don't understand what you mean by dispraportinional to what chance would predict.  It just makes sense. If you are in line for 200 books instead of 22-that's 178 more chances of getting a WL offer every day.  Will you get a WL offer every day-probably not. But those additional 178 books on your WL increased your odds and so over all-you are likely to get more WL offers.  Obviously if you  wish for very rare, hardly every posted books you still won't get many.  But it doesn't look like you are so far.  You don't appear to be wishing for anything out of print and super expensive to buy used. 

Some books look like they'll take forever becasue they have a long line. But really don't take that long because they're posted regularly. 

ETA: It's like buying raffle tickets.  The more raffle tickets you buy for a raffle-the better your odds are of winning.  The more WL lines you are in, the more you are likely to get WL offers.

A lot of the WL depends on how often that book gets posted.  Just as an example, I have several WLs that I have been waiting on for well over a month at number one or two but have not moved a bit in that long because the book just isn't being posted too often.  But others I am like number 200, but have moved up 2 or 3 spaces in just a few days because the books have been posted.  So that has a lot to do with it.  And if the books you are waiting on are immensely popular right now, there will likely be a lot of copies being posted in the next couple of months as people finish the books. 

And of course...the above explanation about why having more books is good is golden advice.  Every book you WL will have a different amount of people waiting and will be posted on a different basis than any other list.  One of those books may have 30 on the WL, but they regularly get 2 or 3 books posted a week so you won't be waiting long at all.  Other book, you may be the only person on the WL but it hasn't been posted in 6 months so you might be waiting for awhile.  But until you get into the line, you won't be getting anything...so it's always worth it to WL.

OK I think you're all saying the obvious, the more lists I'm on the sooner I'll get something.  Now to find books I want to be on the wishlist for...

"A lot of the WL depends on how often that book gets posted."  Amen to that.  I have the full 200 on my WL (actually 202, because two books I ordered not on my WL timed out and got added), but I have gotten maybe a half dozen off my WL in the last year.  (I can't remember for sure which were WL and which I just ordered.)  I suspect many of the books on my WL have never been posted and will never be posted. :-(

I second that, my WL is 300 books long and dead. I have sold 80 credits and keep only 10, just in case, but even that is too optimistic I fear.

So it really depends on your WL composition.

William, please feel free to post your WL books in Wish List multiples.  You can send them out together and save postage too!

Those 20-30 packages could be turned in to something more manageable if you prefer to do it that way.

  I have no choiice.  I simply cannot afford to continue sending out my average.......which is almost 30 books a month. 

BTW, there are lots of ways to get WL books besides just waiting.  I've been invited to some Games, and from what I hear, you get a lot of good books that way. 

I tend to get a lot of my WL books because I keep my list *dynamic*.  That means that I have a *base* of 75 books that I expect to wait a real long time for, but that I want dearly.   But the rest, I try to keep finding other stuff I would be just as happy with in the meantime..

I dunno, I tend to be rather tenacious when I want something, but I've found that for that to work,  it usually involves me taking *more action*  and spending a bit more effort than I originally thought.  LOL   So, I do read WL Multiples and Posted Under Different ISBN and stuff like that on a regular basis.  Now I am thinking of playing a few games to win some great books!

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