The problem I'm having at this point is lack of "good" books to choose from. Any book that was a best seller in the past few years has a waiting list a mile long. Reference type books are non existent. I am, of course, on many waiting lists now but it will likely be half a year or more before I get moved up in the queue. However, there are some older books, many of which are good classics, that are immediately available. If you are not a picky reader like I am, then you can probably find ample books to request that can be shipped immediately.
The perceived lack of good quality books somewhat perplexed me since the system, as I understood it, should work better than it does. In theory, the only way someone could request a book is if they had a book credit available. And since the way to get book credits is to ship one of your books to someone (when they request it), then the supply vs. demand for good books should be relatively equal. The only factor that may skew it slightly is that you get 2 free credits when you initially open your account.
Then I realized what was going on... the site actually allows you to purchase book credits with real money. As if that wasn't bad enough, the credits are priced very cheap. If you add up the cost of shipping on a book plus the wrapping material you are almost spending as much to ship a book as it costs to buy a credit. When you factor in gas money and the value of your time you spend packaging and driving to the post office - you are better off just buying the credits. What's the obvious problem with this? If everyone is buying credits and putting in requests for popular books, there is no one listing popular book. Thus the wait list for popular books grows and grows.
What makes is even worse is that you can be on the wait list without even buying a credit. When you finally make it to the top you are notified and have the option to buy a cheap credit and the book will be shipped to you.
So until I receive my first book, or figure out a better genre of books to search for - I'm giving the site a pretty mediocre rating. There was enormous possibility here and I personally think they screwed it up. That being said, the site is young and growing still and there is a chance they will make it better. But for now, I don't recommend signing up and listing your good books. They will be immediately snatched up and you will be lucky to find any book to replace them with unless you are willing to wait for a very long time. That being said, it makes perfect sense to sign up and get on a ton of wait lists for pre-releases and simply purchase cheap credits when your book becomes available (just know that you are making it worse for me :)
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