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Posts Tagged ‘Press & Media’

PBS Gives Thousands of Books to Local Non-profit

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

PaperBackSwap.com Gives Thousands of Books to Local Non-profit

Frisco-Online.com – 1/21/2011 by Kelley Van Auken

The largest Book Club in America, PaperBackSwap.com, recently donated almost 6,000 new books to local 501(c)(3) non-profit My Very Own Book. The books will be used in MVOB’s reading incentive program, which is run in five elementary schools in low-income neighborhoods: two in Dallas ISD, two in Richardson ISD, and one in Plano ISD. Students in the participating schools read outside of schools hours and are rewarded every six weeks with a new, free book of their choice.

PBS began the School Book Donation Program last year to provide books for students because of the company’s belief in both the power of reading and the power of giving. The schools selected to participate in the Books for Schools Program are based on needs of the students. PBS club members who wanted to support the program selected a school and donated their extra credits to purchase books for the students. For each credit donated by a member of PBS, PaperBackSwap and supporting organizations provided books for the school. Overall, the 2010 program has provided approximately 30,000 books to 30 schools, five of which are MVOB schools.

“We are very pleased with our club members’ amazingly generous and quick response to this program – they obviously feel strongly about the education of children in America. Access to books is crucial to foster a child’s love of reading, so the books our members have donated will have a big impact on these kids’ lives. We hope to be able to continue this program and help more needy schools all over the country,” said Richard Pickering, Founder of PaperBackSwap.com.

PaperBackSwap.com is a free online book club where members swap books just for the cost of postage. People join PBS by posting on the PaperBackSwap.com website good condition books from their bookshelf that they are willing to share. Two startup credits are given by PBS to start the member’s swapping. Credits are earned by sending out books to other members. Any available paperback or hardcover book may be ordered for one credit, and audio books may be ordered for two credits.

Complete information about the online book club is available at www.paperbackswap.com. To learn more about the school book donation program or to nominate a school, go to http://www.paperbackswap.com/donations/schools.php. To learn more about My Very Own Book, go to www.myveryownbook.org.

Founder & Member featured guests on ABC 33/40 of Birmingham

Monday, July 13th, 2009

Last week local Birmingham member Becky Reardon and I were featured guests on Birmingham’s ABC 33/40. Check it out below!

Who would have thought we would be getting so much great press and media coverage only 4 years after the start-up? It was not very long ago that we only had 500,000 books available to swap! I would like to thank the PBS Team for their hard work, but I know we couldn’t have done it without our core members helping to spread the word about how fun and easy it is to swap books, CD’s, and DVD’s.

Thanks again,
Richard Pickering

Writers, Front and Center! Newsletter – February 2008

Monday, February 4th, 2008

Some of our best members come from small towns and cities across the US.  But many communities have never even heard about PaperBackSwap or the sister sites SwapaCD and SwapaDVD because there has never been any media coverage where they live.  And unfortunately, many of these small publications do not have the staff to write about our club themselves.  So we are asking for some help from members who are writers and have previously submitted articles to newspapers/magazines for publication.  If you are interested in working with Richard on getting some articles written about PaperBackSwap – we sure could use your help!   Please send inquiries to the email address we have set up for this purpose: RichardPickering@PaperBackSwap.com.   Thanks in advance to all who step forward to help!

PBS is bustin’ out all over… Newsletter – March 2007

Saturday, March 3rd, 2007

February 2007 marked the 26th straight month of increased growth at PBS. Which means that every month, more members have joined than the month before. We have added thousands of members in the first two months of 2007 alone! Welcome to all of our new swappers. Please take a look at the Dear R&R section below, for some “pointers” that might help you during this time.

The Buzz… just keeps on buzzing. Recent media mentions include:

  • Wired Magazine
  • Real Simple Magazine
  • The Columbus Dispatch
  • Good Housekeeping
  • And many other small town newspapers

For all the members who found us through these outlets and recently joined, welcome to PBS!

You asked for it…you got it! You may have noticed that we have changed the programming so that when a Wish List offer or book request is pending in your account, there is a button on the screen that will take you to your account for five minutes, so that you can accomplish other tasks there before responding to the offer or request.

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.

In The News . . . Newsletter – August 2005

Thursday, August 11th, 2005

What success we’ve had with our Public Relations contest! Members from all across the United States have received between 25 and 50 free credits for their efforts in promoting the club. Through contacts with newspapers and television, members have wonderfully exposed their various communities to PaperBackSwap. This exposure means more members for the club, which in turn means more books for everyone. To see a selection of some of our PR and Media Coverage highlights, check out the section in the left hand column of the home page of the club. Thanks to all those members that participated.

Keep in mind that while the contest may have ended, we all still benefit from any PR and Media efforts you offer. We encourage you to do it for your club and fellow members. Remember, Oprah will want to interview lots of members if she ever gets ahold of this story. Just think, we could all meet in Chicago! 🙂