Just need to voice this and get it over with.  I have 4 copies of a book on the wish list - says there are 9 wanting it.   I understand that it is offered to the first person on the list and they are given 48 hours.  Well, the 48 hours turns into 3 or 4 or more days and so my book is tied up.   I believe it is rolling to the next person on the list if the first person passes and so hence the extra long time being held on the wish list tab.  People need to update their wish lists so that the people who really want the book can get it and I can move these off my shelf.   The reason I went back and purchased the additional copies of the book was because I saw it was a wish list book and I thought I would be making someone else very happy.   All I have done it seems is make myself upset. 

Said and Done

Gloria

Gloria, it may not be that your book isn't wanted by the people who are wishing for it.  Some members only have a few credits to work it or perhaps none at all.  So they have to be selective and stretch those credits.  I try to put books on hold that I'm not ready for yet, but sometimes I forget or don't realize that I'm now first on the waiting list.  I've also had the offers of WL books I posted rollover a few times, but it actually doesn't happen that often.  So try not to get discouraged, I'm sure the person who does accept your wl offer will be grateful. Good Luck :)

~Shannon

I learned the hard way to not buy books based on their WL status here - burned too often.

It's holiday time and people get really busy and can easily miss or not be concerned with what's on their WL here. Some depend on their local library to access the internet, with libraries having holiday hours over Thanksgiving (ours was closed 2 full days and closed 4 hours earlier than usual on Wednesday), the 48-hour window could easily come and go.

Also, depending on where the wishers live they could very well be caught up in the stress of storm Sandy. I have a cousin who was wiped out completely in New York and we didn't hear anything about or from her for weeks.

PBS teaches us patience, and to not take things personally. Belated welcome to PBS, Gloria. And don't forget: the WL book you posted will end up at the head of the FIFO line when/if it ends up there, so it's pretty much a win-win situation. Yours will be one of the first to be requested.

GAil

Yeah just because a book is WL doesn'tn mean it will get sent out quickly.  People abandon accounts, forget to delete books they no longer want or need, forget to hold books when they run out of credtis, etc...,

I learned pretty quickly that it wasn't worth it financially to buy books just to post. But when I did and found a cheap Wl book somewhere, I would only get 1 copy and only if it had a long WL.  I posted a book 1 time that had 14 people on wish and by the time it was accepted there was only a couple of wishers left. 

Gloria, welcome to PBS and I feel your pain!  Just keep telling yourself you're making the line shorter for those people at the end and maybe weeding out some inactive accounts as well.  I frequently buy books because they're WLed (multiples sometimes, too) and run into this.  Almost every book, though, gets requested eventually.  Even ones that end up going to FIFO are requested within a week or two.  I've often wondered if the people who let the offer pass up end up going back and requesting it later.

Good luck!

Hi Gloria, you're right about updating wishlists, that's a good reminder for us all.  I try to go through mine every few months to make sure it's up to date but am probably past due to do so.

It's nice of you to look for WL books, don't be discouraged by the results.  Many of us are very happy when a book is posted to our WL and will accept it quickly.

Diane

I agree, it is frustrating to have to wait for days and sometimes weeks for someone to accept a book that's wishlisted. It sounds like you're not getting many outright refusals, just time-outs, which could be due to abandoned (temporary or permanent) accounts or people who just miss seeing the email notification. It's the start of the holiday season, the week after Thanksgiving, not to mention the folks that have been affected by Sandy. Unfortunately, there isn't really a way to avoid the 2-day wait without being unfair to people who can't spend all day on the computer checking PBS.

I personally have auto-request turned on for almost every book in my wishlist. I know I want them - that's why I have them on my wishlist - so why not just skip an unnecessary step? I got burned by missing a wishlist book or two in my early days on PBS and I didn't want that to happen anymore.

As a sender, I only list books that are wishlisted or the only copies in the system, because I don't have a lot of extra storage space. I really appreciate people who have auto-request on or accept books quickly, because it means that I can ship all my outbound books at once. I don't do online postage and go to the PO to mail, so being able to do it in one trip rather than multiple ones is much handier.

I agree with others, I'm not sure that bothering with multiple copies of a wishlisted book, or buying books I'm not interested in personally just because they're wishlisted, is worth it in the long run. I suppose I might bother if I got them for free, but I'm not going to spend extra money or time. It's cheaper to buy credits in the bazaar than the cost of shipping an average book, anyway, so that's an easy way to get credits if a lack of credits is your concern.

I had that happen quite a bit over the summer. Like you I was picking up used books at our FOL sale that I'd seen on the WL, but when I posted them, noone would ever accept--I figured they were people who WL books  when there were hundreds in line for the book and stopped using PBS but never cleared out their accts.  So I've stopped doing that unless it's a book I will read first.

If you have more than one WL book to send, you can try listing them in the WL Mulitiples thread in the Book Bazaar.  I've had good luck using that thread, in ordering books and in sending them out.