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Dear Members, Newsletter – October 2007

Thursday, October 4th, 2007

We were listening to music (a classic Smashing Pumpkins CD that we got from SwapaCD) and we got to feeling really Hallowe’en-y. It must have been some subliminal association with the word “pumpkins”. We were humming along, but instead of feeling Smashing Pumpkins’ full of rage or like rats in a cage, instead we started getting in the mood to give out yummy stuff for free. So we buckled down to work and put some new features on the site–some that we have been thinking about and working on for a while, and a couple that just came to us out of the blue. You can find the new “treats” on the site–the Recipes page, the Instant Credit feature, the Tags (read more about all of these below). Yep, Hallowe’en at PBS is all Treats, no Tricks. No carbs or cavities, either.

The moral of the story: Be careful what you listen to…music has the power to drive all kinds of behavior. (Where would the new iPod Nano be without Feist?) Harness that power for GOOD, people!

What’s on your SwapaCD Tower?

Have a great October,

The PaperBackSwap Team

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Dear Members, Newsletter – September 2007

Wednesday, September 5th, 2007

We had a very nice birthday at the Decatur Book Festival!  It was great to meet some of our members and we got to tell a lot of booklovers about PBS.   For more photos of the festival, check out the new Photo Gallery (under Community in the menu at the top of the site).

PBS will be participating in festivals in Montana, WY, Baltimore, Georgia and South Dakota this month. In October, we’ll be in Kansas, New Jersey, Illinois, Tennessee, West Virginia and Florida. Anyone who lives in the area of any of these festivals (see the list below) and who wants to help out, please contact us by sending email to  RichardPickering@paperbackswap.com.  What volunteers do: man the PBS booth, pass out flyers, yak with prospective members.  What volunteers get: the opportunity to get tons of referral credits by passing out flyers/business cards with their referral info on them, a PBS Tshirt, the chance to meet other members in their area, and our undying gratitude!  Some of the members who helped with Decatur have already had a lot of new referrals come rolling in…many before the festival had even officially ended!

Upcoming Book Festivals:

  • Missoula, MT “Montana Festival of the Book” September 13-15
  • Cheyenne, WY “Wyoming Book Festival” September 14th and 15th
  • Baltimore, MD “Baltimore Book Festival” September 28th-30th
  • South Dakota “South Dakota Festival of Books” September 28th-30th
  • Blue Ridge, GA “Georgia Literary Festival” September 29th and 30th
  • Wichita, KS “Kansas Book Festival” October 5th and 6th
  • Collingswood, NJ “Collingswood Book Festival” October 6th
  • Aurora, IL “Midwest Literary Festival” October 6th and 7th
  • Nashville, TN “The Southern Festival of Books” October 12th-14th
  • Charleston, WV “West Virginia Book Festival” October 12th-14th
  • St. Petersburg, FL “St. Petersburg Times Festival of Reading” October 27th
  • Sarasota, FL “Sarasota Reading Festival” November 3rd
  • Miami, FL “Miami Book Fair International” November 4th-11th

and more to come….

Thanks to our members who made Decatur such a blast: Nancy G (nancyg) and Cheryl G (Poncer), who helped both days; and Diane G (icesk8tr), Lisa M, Patricia G (goldengirl), Jacqueline K, Nancy W (NancyW),  Elizabeth S, Nancy B (NancyB), Karen C (Karen), Jill M (jmccall93), Cynthia S. (Cynthia), Blair G (eblairj), Ronelle G (LargePrintBooks), Amy M (georgiagymdog), and Alan M. We are looking forward to meeting more of our members at future festivals!

Thanks,

Richard&Robert
and the PaperBackSwap Team

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Dear Members, Newsletter – August 2007

Wednesday, August 8th, 2007

Midsummer… dog days… thermostat rising. Back-to-school around the corner… wouldn’t it be nice to have something fun to look forward to? Well…

No plans for Labor Day Weekend yet? Why not make the trip to Decatur, Georgia and come to the Decatur Book Festival! PBS will have a booth there, and we would love to meet you! The festival is in its third year; it’s FREE and open to the public. Hundreds of authors will be there and many thousands of readers; one of the keynote speakers will be Charles Frazier (author of Cold Mountain), and there will be author readings, panel discussions and signings, poetry slams (sign up to perform your own work!), cooking author demonstrations, children’s activities, live music and more. Read more about the event here. Don’t forget, it’s FREE. We hope to see a lot of PBS members in the crowds!

As PBS’s third birthday approaches (September 1st), we can’t help but think about how far this site has come. Over 1,500,000 books have been swapped here in that time, and now we’re seeing more than 30,000 swaps per week, every week. But what’s shared here is more than books; it’s conversation, kindness, friendship. We love visiting the forums for a chuckle (some of you are really funny!) and it’s great to stop in Chat and meet you in real time. Everywhere we look, the site is hopping! In the Games forum, the inventiveness of the games is really astounding. Our Data Correction and Image Collection volunteers have been terrifically busy, and the effects of their work can be seen all over the site. More and more, PBS is becoming a co-creation…we may do the programming, but you all make the club what it is.

Swap on, folks!

The PaperBackSwap Team

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Dear Members, Newsletter – June 2007

Friday, June 8th, 2007

Whew! What a month it has been. The new site rolled out on May 14th, as you know, and after a flurry of bugfixes, all has been well. We appreciate your patience with them, and your efforts in reporting any problems you had; with our members’ help, we were able to get everything smoothed out quickly. We also appreciate all the suggestions that were made for “tweaks” to the interface, and most of them have been incorporated. The site will continue to evolve, of course–it is a work in progress always–but we are happy with how it looks and works now, and according to the feedback we have received, so are most of you! Thanks so much for all your messages and help. If we haven’t gotten to your suggestion yet, don’t worry, it’s on our list of things to consider!

Now that the new site design is in place, we can get to implementing some of the new features we have had planned. We liked the old site, too, but it was upgraded about as far as we could take it. Now that PBS 2.0 is in place, some great ideas can become reality. We think you will love what’s coming!

A word to all our military members and families–we hope that this past Memorial Day found your loved ones safe. To those who have sacrificed so much serving our country, we give our unending gratitude. Military addresses at PBS are listed as (city/state) APO/AE or FPO/AE. We encourage all of our “stateside” members to request books from these addresses–every book sent out will get the military member a credit to get another book. When you’re far from home, books in English can seem like a lifeline. You can use the Search to find these members: just click Search in the toolbar at the top of the site, choose “Browse Member Books” and enter APO or FPO in the field for city; choose AE from the dropdown menu for State.

And of course, everyone, don’t forget to sign the petition to Stop the Fires and Save the Books! Send the message that there are people who still love reading–and many of them are at PBS.

Thanks as always,

The PaperBackSwap Team

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Dear Members, Newsletter – May 2007

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

May… a time for things to blossom… which includes PBS. We hope to have the new site ready soon. It will be (if we do say so ourselves) a marvel. So many of the features you have asked us for have been implemented, and we are working on many others. The new site will be easier to use, feature-packed, and just darned pretty to look at! You should expect the new site to go live this month, barring unforeseen circumstances (or our untimely demise for exhaustion).

With the site growing so fast and changing so much, we anticipate a need for more PBS Volunteers, especially Tour Guides. Our PBS Tour Guides are our club “ambassadors”—the first people that most new members encounter on the site. The new site will be easier to use than the current design, but still there’s nothing like a helpful, friendly Tour Guide to give an idea of what PBS is all about. Tour Guides get little icons on their Forum sigs and PBS Profiles, and they also get access to a private Forum. To be a Tour Guide, you must have a PBS Nickname and have belonged to PBS for at least 4 months. There is also a little “quiz” involved to demonstrate basic working knowledge of the site—not too hard, we promise! If you are interested in joining this great group, contact Diane G. (icesk8tr), our Tour Guide Coordinator, or send us a message in the feedback area.

Don’t forget to read about the upcoming Postal Rate increase in News, below…

We wish a very happy Mother’s Day to all our Moms out there. And also to all of those that just feel like moms (overwhelmed and multitasking)! Hey, that makes us moms, too. 🙂

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Dear Members: Newsletter – April 2007

Saturday, April 7th, 2007

We have had a wonderful month at PBS. So much has happened! The new interface is coming along, and we have many new features in the works. We passed the million-book (both posted and sent) mark, and we have welcomed many new members from all over the country. Those who heard about us from the following magazines, newspapers, radio and TV, welcome!

We want to thank all of you who responded to the PBS Survey and submitted your very helpful comments and suggestions. We got more than 2000 survey responses in a very short time, and we read all of them! The new site design is being guided by what our members want. We are asking for comments on the new interface (several sample pages are available), to help us as we continue to make changes. Please see the item in News for the link. We have gotten a lot of great feedback (and have done further tweaking) already! Thanks to our members, “PBS 2.0” will be the best it can be!

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Dear Members, Newsletter – January 2007

Saturday, January 6th, 2007

Happy New Year!

We begin the year close to the 1,000,000-book mark. I am sure we’ll reach it before long. A million books—it boggles the mind, doesn’t it? PBS continues to grow in membership, and we are by far the biggest bookswapping club on the Internet. Bigger isn’t ALWAYS better, of course. But in this case…it is! 🙂

We have made a lot of improvements to the site in the last year, and hope for great things in 2007. Thanks to those of you who have written in with nice comments about new features (and tweaks to existing features) that you enjoy. And thanks also to those who have written in to let us know that something isn’t working so we can fix it, and to those who submit their ideas about changes they would like to see to the site. PBS is constantly evolving! Rest assured that even if your suggestions do not “bear fruit” immediately, they may do so in the future. Sometimes we’re just working out the programming, or brainstorming the best possible way to make a change.

PBS was mentioned in the news recently: In the month of December All of the following newspapers or magazines ran items about the club. Welcome to our new members from those areas!

We wish all of our members–longstanding, new and in between–a wonderful 2007.

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