We know that at the moment you’re all busy picking a gift for your
assigned blogger and getting their package ready to be mailed. In the
middle of all the excitement, we hate to remind you that your
carefully chosen and lovingly wrapped gift might get lost in the mail
- but the fact is, with almost 400 package being sent all over the
world, there’s a high chance that some won’t arrive.

For this reason, we decided to set up a donation centre. This is how
it works: those of you interested in donating a gently used book, a
gift card, a bookmark, etc should e-mail us at
bbholidayswap[at]gmail[dot]com telling us a) what you’re donating
and b) where in the world you’d be willing to send it (except if it’s
a gift card, of course).

Then, in mid-January (we want to give it enough time to make sure the
packages are truly lost), we’ll put up another post reminding bloggers
whose gifts didn’t arrive to get in touch with us. They’ll then be
given a list of all the items that were donated so that they can pick
something from it. We know it’s not the same as, say, sitting by the
Christmas Tree and opening your gift , but this way we’ll at least
make sure nobody is left empty-handed.

Many thanks in advance to our donors – you’re all awesome!

We’d also like to take this chance to remind you that international
packages should be mailed by the 30th of November, while packages
being sent domestically should be on their way by the 5th of December.

Thank you again for participating, and Happy Holidays!

Sign-ups for the 2009 swap are now closed. As long as you’ve signed up, you should be receiving an e-mail with the information about your secret santee between November 13th (today-Friday) and November 17th (Tuesday). If you haven’t received an e-mail by Tuesday, please check your e-mail spam folder. If there isn’t one there, please contact us (bbholidayswapATgmailDOTcom). Your e-mail will have the subject ‘Book Blogger Holiday Swap.’ Once you’ve received your e-mail, you can get started brainstorming the perfect gift and wrapping it up! Remember, if you’re sending your present internationally we ask it be in the mail by November 30th. If you’re sending it domestically, we ask it be in the mail by December 5th. And if you have any questions, be sure to check out the FAQ page.

Several more bloggers have volunteered to help with the e-mailing, so we’d like to take a moment to acknowledge all of the bloggers running things behind the scenes: Amanda, Amy, Ana, Chris, Debi, Eva, Jen, Jenn, Jill, Kelly, Lena, Lenore, and Nicole.

If you missed the deadline, don’t despair; remember that this is the third year of the swap, so it will certainly be back next year!

Welcome to the home of Book Bloggers Holiday Swap! Not really sure what all of this is about? Go read our extensive FAQ page.

Ready to join the gift giving fun? Great! You sign up via the google form; enter all of the information and hit submit. But make sure you do so before our deadline: November 12, 2009. In order to make sure everyone gets matched up and gifts get sent in a timely manner, we will be closing sign-ups after November 12. So go ahead and fill out the form now! If you’re not sure how to answer one of the questions, refer back to the FAQs. If you’re still not sure, leave a comment and we’ll get back to you as quickly as possible.

–>Click HERE to go to the Google form and sign up.<–

The more participants we have in the swap, the more fun for everyone! So if you think this is a neat idea, please help spread the word: a brief mention of it in your next blog post, a button in your sidebar (steal the one in this post or go to our buttons page for a smaller version), whatever you want to do. We have a Twitter presence as well: our account is @holidayswap, so follow us for more holiday fun (and maybe an appearance or two by Santa himself) and the hashtag is #holidayswap if you’re tweeting about it.

Finally, if you participated last year and sent an e-mail which was never replied to, please see the explanation. Obviously, those circumstances were unusual in the extreme; this year we have a team of 8 Santa helpers ready to make sure this year’s holiday swap is the best ever!