Posted by Patrick Brown on September 30, 2011

Sometimes in the course of a products life we have reconsider our priorities. After months of careful exploration and thought, we have made the sad decision to put Goodreads Bookswap on indefinite hiatus.We initially launched Bookswap as a way to help our members pass on their favorite books on other readers--and we still love that idea. However, we realized that to properly support and innovate bookswap required more love than we could give. In the end, we feel our focus and our strengths need to be applied elsewhere.Over the next few weeks, you'll see several changes relating to Goodreads Bookswap as we gradually remove it from the site. The basic functionality will remain active until October 31. If you have unspent swap credits, you must use them before this date. Also, effective immediately, we will no longer be issuing new book credits for books shipped.Since we know that many of you love to swap and will continue to do so, we'd like to encourage you to add your favorite swap site as a book link on your account. Most popular swap sites are already options, and all you'll have to do is click "add" as it appears next to the link. Additionally, you can now log into the popular site Bookcrossing with your Goodreads account. Feel free to recommend your favorite swap site below.This is a sad moment, as the two thousand something of you who have used bookswap have by and large really enjoyed it. But the truth is that there are many other services that let people obtain books they want at a cheap price, and they do it better than we did. We're going to continue to focus on helping people find, discuss, and enjoy books - which is what we think we are good at. Perhaps we will revisit bookswap someday, but in the meantime we are very exited to work on improving other features, such as cataloging, groups, recommendations, and more.We'd like to thank everyone who gave us feedback on our swap system. We really appreciate your passionate comments and suggestions. We'd also like to thank everyone who ever sent a book to another person. A good read in the mail a gift that keeps on giving.