yuletide | 2024: Dance of the Swaps Fairies || SIGN-UPS ARE OPEN!

Hello! Look at us, opening ever earlier! Our hope/delusion is that this will give us and you some buffer when emails and packages go astray.

But first... This is my fifteenth (!!) year running swaps, and my life has changed a lot since 2010. Livi and I are interested in hearing from anyone who might want to help (are you good at swiftly and patiently answering emails??) and/or take over, should we decide to stop running swaps in the near future.

Don't get us wrong, we love you! We want to continue! But life. So we shall see. :)

YULESWAPS 2024 SCHEDULE:

+ Sign-up forms are open now and will close on Saturday, October 5, 2024 at ~~12:00 PM PDT~~ 9:00 PM PDT (turns out we're both busy that afternoon so now you get 9 more hours :)). Click here for a countdown. Tell your friends! Tell your enemies! Tell Siri to set a reminder!

+ Match-ups will go out by late October over a period of 3-ish days (to accommodate mail merge sending limits).

You will then have at least 2 weeks to MAIL YOUR PACKAGE/S. Before signing up, please do a reality/calendar check to make sure you have the time, money, and bandwidth! (PLEASE research international shipping if you've never done it before! It's $$$!)

Multi-swap swappers: DO NOT WAIT to check in, and especially don't wait to contact your recipient/s! The clock starts separately for each swap when it hits your inbox. Your recip WILL worry. They WILL email us, appropriately. We WILL email you, annoyed. ;3

+ This year's SENDING DEADLINE: Saturday, November 16, 2024 (close of business at your local post office/courier service, or midnight if you're ordering online!)

REMINDERS:

+ Swaps Central: Our all-in-one check-in form! Link to be provided constantly after match-ups. The most crucial check-ins are immediately after you receive your match-up email and immediately after you've SENT your package/s.

We know who checks in on time and who doesn't! (But we also send reminders to ensure everyone checks in.)

+ Email: Please be prepared to contact your recipient within 48 hours of receiving your match-up email + respond to your sender ASAP when they email you (even if it's brief). We want to know soon after match-ups that everyone has successfully received at least 1 email from their sender AND at least 1 email from their recip, and make sure you're all set up to shop/order/mail gifts on time!

If you haven't heard from your sender within 48 hours, first check your spam folder, then feel free to try emailing them! If you still haven't heard from them after 4 days, please email us to prod your sender.

(If you're new, whitelist yuleswaps at gmail dot com to be sure you get all our emails! But also check spam/watch this community just in case.)

+ Defaulting/withdrawing: We want swaps to be fun, not stressful. So first, if you're stressed now just imagining "email back tomorrow" or "get to the post office by next weekend," please don't sign up. Maybe next year! But IF YOU DO sign up and then FOR ANY REASON realize you're no longer up to it -- just tell us! The sooner and more honestly you communicate with us, the easier it is for us to work out a solution that protects your sender and recip, frees you from anxiety, AND potentially allows you to participate in the future. <3

Also, let us know ASAP if you need an extension on sending out your package! If you don't send out a package by the deadline and don't contact us for an extension, we will assume you defaulted (or vanished off the face of the earth). We will a) worry and b) have to eventually ban you. :(

+ DW/LJ: We always update on DW as soon as match-ups go out, in case any emails get eaten by spam. Please see the current FAQ for instructions on how to track the various yuleswaps tags!

(If we do continue next year, we will finally consolidate down to one tag…lol.)

+ Signing up: Google Forms should send a copy of your sign-up responses. You can edit them (via the link provided in that email) until sign-ups close! Please read the instructions carefully.

AND... SIGN-UPS!

Welcome to the Dance of the Swaps Fairies! This year we'll aim to give better gifts than Drosselmeyer.

Candyswap 2024: the Land of Sweets!
Drinkswap 2024: le thé / café / chocolat!
Bookswap 2024: the March of Books!

Questions? Check out the current FAQ. ~~(Livi may soon post a new, easier-to-read one! If so, we will update this post accordingly!)~~ Recently cleaned up by Livi! If that doesn't help, feel free to comment here or email us at yuleswaps at gmail dot com!

Kat (

kindness_says) & Livi (

anialove)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I've only ever done candy swaps, but I'm debating book swap this year, too. If anyone who has done book swap before would share their experience(s) with it, I'd love to hear about it.

Hi, there. Amanda, here!

I've done all three for all the years Yuletides Swaps has been going on, and I'd absolutely love to answer any questions you might have about what to expect from the book swap.

Have you typically gotten things that you've liked?

Hello! Obv I'm not the person you replied to (who hopefully will come back and answer you too), but my general/personal feeling about bookswap is that it's more of a mixed bag than candyswap, depending how much surprise you/your sender want to preserve, how much you talk, and honestly just luck (how good the match is because same genre doesn't always mean perfect taste match, of course).

If it worries you to possibly get books you've read before (though, if you clear titles beforehand, this can be avoided) or books where it's like, "Oh okay, good faith effort, I can see why you'd think I'd like this, but meh," then bookswap will probably be less successful for you than just getting recs from friends and buying the books yourself. But if you're open to a slight roll of the dice and excited to choose for someone else, try it out! Lots of people have absolutely loved their senders. (Early on, I used to worry during matching that some people are far more well-read than others, but that doesn't seem to be a huge issue? We do our best, but also maybe the demo is inherently people who read a lot, haha.)

Edited 2024-10-03 19:58 (UTC)

Thank you! I went ahead and signed up for book swap. :D

Oh good! I didn't check but thought you might've. Hope it goes well for you! :D

I've done that one for years too, if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them. (Afraid my brain tends to blank without specifics!) Did you want to know about both ends?

I've sent ebooks, audiobooks and print books over the years, and received all three, sometimes a mixture. Fiction, poetry, handcrafts texts...

I almost never send just one book, and often secondhand ones if my recipient is okay with that. I've sent things from the post office in person, and ordered online for all three kinds, and sometimes I've received or shared gift codes, though that last can get complex internationally.

I'm perfectly happy receiving just one book from my sender, but I love to share things with people when I hear about their interests, especially if we have something in common and there are similar works they might enjoy, so I tend to get excited (autistic nerd!). I especially like to be introduced to new authors or to be sent works I don't already have from authors I already like.

One year I had a flood and lost many of my YA books, and my sender kindly replaced an entire quartet of them. Another time, I'd lost a beloved poetry collection when the friend who borrowed it passed away, and my sender replaced it. People have been very kind and generous over the years. I love the book swap!

Thanks so much for all that information! When a sender has provided something new-to-you (rather than replacing damaged items), have you generally liked what you've received?

For the most part strongly so, yes; over the years that's been a mixture of new works from familiar authors and works from authors new to me, and each have turned out very well. I've been doing the book swap for over a decade now, and I've truly never been disappointed by what I've received when the swaps have been successful (there has been the occasional instance where a gift code for an Audible title wouldn't work for my country, or when the work an online shop sent was not the one the sender had ordered, but those have only happened once each, and the swaps team organised substitutes ♥).

Edited (addition) 2024-10-01 14:27 (UTC)

I had fun with book swap the year I did it (got a book I'd not read before and liked it); planning on doing so again this year.

I wasn't sure where to ask this. This year will be my first Yuletide. I've nommed my fandoms (and they were approved), and I'm just waiting on the tagset to be released and sign-ups to open. I'm even planning to pinch hit. I'd never heard of Yuleswaps until you posted in Yuletide's comm. Due to major dietary restrictions, I can't participate in the other swaps, but I'd love to do the bookswap. May I?

I'm not a swap-admin, but it's totally OK to only do the bookswap (I know, because it's the only one I've ever done :) )

Thanks so much for the info., but I meant that this will be my first Yuletide participating, and I just wanted to make sure I could do the swaps since you're supposed to be an active participant in Yuletide? Did I get that right? I read the shorter and longer FAQs for the swaps, but I still was a bit confused. Just wanted to clarify before I signed up.

I did Yuleswaps the first year I did Yuletide a couple of years ago. I don’t think there’s meant to be a high barrier to entry.

That sounds logical. I think I'll go with it. Thanks! :)

Hi! Very possible you've already signed up because of these helpful responses from other people, but yes, you absolutely qualify if you plan to participate in Yuletide this year. (And sometimes even if you don't! But in your case that's not relevant. :)) Some years I will check who is and isn't signed up, but I probably won't even do that this year as we've opened sign-ups so early.

But yeah, what's most important is being able to communicate + go to the post office (or send a book in whatever way makes sense for you). Welcome!

Hey, did my sign-up for this go through? Is there a way you can check? I'm having trouble with my adblockers and google forms, and I'd hate to be waiting for an assignment and not get one because you never got mine in the first place.

You should've gotten a confirmation email at the time! Is this you realizing very belatedly that you didn't? Not sure how an adblocker would cause that to happen -- but who knows -- or maybe it's in your spam?

Regardless, fear not, we did get your sign-up.

Just so long as you got it. :) Sorry, I have major anxiety, and I feel the need to randomly double-check things. Thank you!

LOL no worries. You'll fit right in! ;)

2024: Dance of the Swaps Fairies || SIGN-UPS ARE OPEN!

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New to Yuletide-can I still bookswap?

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