I want to do a ‘bookswap’ as an event for my meetup group, and I’m trying to work out how the logistics of such a thing would work.
Here’s my current working theory, anyone spot any major problems?
– People arrive, lay out their books on a counter, get some kind of counting device (tickets, paperclips, jelly beans, whatever), one per book that they’ve brought.
– Order of procession is decided on based on some random (pick a number out of a hat) type device.
– The first person can pick any one of the books that’s laid out, and give up one counter. The second person then picks one book and gives up one counter, etc, though the list of persons.
– When you get back to the first person, they can pick 2 books, and give up 2 counters, etc. Then the second person picks 2.
– Proceed this way, adding one book picked per round, with people dropping out as they run out of counters.
– If anyone decides they don’t want any of the remaining books, they can always give away their tickets or just decline to continue, but they’ll then go away with less books than when they came.
– If there’s anything left at the end (due to passes), free for all, or I’ll freecycle the remainders, or people can claim their own books back.
The goal is to have something that’s fair–so one person doesn’t get to pick all the ‘good stuff’ before some other person gets a chance to pick anything, while at the same time, having the whole thing go moderately rapidly (by increasing the books taken in each round). I would do snacks and beverages and people could sit and visit while other people are taking their turns.
Does this sound useful? Fun? Fair? Etc? Would you, if you had lots of previously read books which you weren’t necessarily inclined to keep, participate?
I’d reverse the procession between turns. (Everybody except the last guy takes 1 book, last guy takes 3 books, everybody except the first guy takes 2 books starting with the penultimate guy, first guy takes 4 books etc.
Bookswaps are fun! Your idea sounds fair, but perhaps (unnecessarily) complicated. How many people are you expecting to take part? If there won’t be that many, people could simply take all the books to the table, then one designated person spreads them out, then everyone takes what they want. Chances are some people will bring lots of books but only want one or two and you’ll have leftovers anyway. Also, should somebody who brings a beautiful hard-backed coffee table book be allowed fewer books than somebody who brings a couple of banged up third-hand paperbacks?
We did a book swap with our sf club when I was in grad school, but in an interesting way. We played poker with books for chips. This worked very well, since if you won a book you really wanted you put it away. The Collected Stories of Barry Malzberg was in every pot.
Heheh. I love the poker idea, but it probably wouldn’t fly with this group – too unlikely that most people would really know how to play.
I think if I host this event, I will probably opt for about 10 people, with the idea that each person should be bringing a dozen or more books, that they’re willing to part with and that they should really be fiction, or, at least, ‘reading’ books – biographies, etc, rather than things like text books, technical manuals, reference books, coffee table books, etc. That’s partly to keep things sort of well matched–most people are more open minded about what kind of fiction they read than they are about what non-fiction subjects they might be interested in–and partly because it’s my event, and I personally am not interested in obtaining any non-fiction books at this time. Really, I’m mostly hoping to have a significant amount of my books go away, because I’m trying to downsize the collection and detach myself from it emotionally before I have to move it next year.
I don’t want to do a different ‘value’ for hardbacks vs. paperbacks, just because the vast majority of my hardback collection was bought remaindered and for quite a lot less than the vast majority of my paperback collection – it doesn’t seem fair to me to make those worth more.
I worry about a free-for-all kind of thing, because I don’t want anyone to feel like they weren’t aggressive enough so they didn’t get any books they wanted. By taking turns, everyone should have a chance to get at least a few things they like.
Just wanted to update this, since the bookswap has now happened. Only 4 people ended up showing up, and since I had vastly more books I was willing to give away than the rest of them combined, I didn’t worry too much about markers for how many books they were permitted. We did do ‘everyone picks one book’ then ‘everyone picks two books’ then ‘everyone picks three books’ then ‘everyone picks four books’. After four books, we moved on to ‘everyone just go grab anything they think they might be interested in’.
It would have worked better, I think, with a few more people, but I ended up with less books than I started with and a few new books that I’m looking forward to reading, so I count it as a success.
