The Paperback Swap Chronicles Vol. 4 – Games

OK, so I’ve had good, bad and indifferent experiences with Paperback Swap, the online book swapping site.  My initial impressions were posted in Book Swapping Online:  Is it worth it? then an Update after switching swap tactics in April, and the most recent third installment on my ongoing experiences with the Forums in July.  I mentioned I hadn’t tried the games and honestly didn’t understand them.  We’ll, I got invited into a beginners game and launched myself into a frenzy of white elephant swaps and three Virtual Boxes.   Now keep in mind, I don’t even play Bingo, and still don’t understand tricky trays, though I understand things like raffles and lotteries – I lose – but I have never participated in a white elephant swap before.  I know, I lead a bizarrely sheltered existence.  Here are my experiences.

PaperbackSwap.com – Review to Date

If nothing else, I can be tenacious as a tick.  I prefer to think of it as determination, though others might account it closer to Missouri Mule stubborn.  After a really bad start and a less awful second portion I have now swapped over 100 books and I still don’t know it all.  PaperBack Swap is actually a bit more complicated than it appears at first blush.

I first wrote about PBS back in March and then did an update in April thinking I knew the site by then.  HA!  I’m still learning some of the things and frankly I do not get other bits at all.

At it’s most basic, you list books and swap them for 1 point per completed transaction and then request new books with your points.  See, very simple.  But a lot of the books swapped are well worn, so you then use ‘Requestor Conditions’ to limit this, as well as add things like, ‘currently in a smoke free home’.  Then you can swap with your buddies – those who have similar interests to your own.  But wait, there’s more!  (I’ve always wanted to say this while selling vegetable peelers that can shave shoes at 2AM in an infomercial.)