How to respond to a book swap request

Requests other authors send you land on the Received Requests tab of Book Swaps, and the badge on the tab counts them. Each one waits up to 5 days for an answer, and never past the end of its share date. This article covers reading a request and the three answers: accept, counter offer, decline.

Read a request

Dana Marek

Asked you yesterday

Expires in 3 days

You sendWed, Nov 4SoloSci-Fi Readers

They sendYou pickFeatureThriller Weekly

An incoming request: what they want on your list and when, what they send back, and how long you have to answer.

You send is what they ask of you: the date you would send, the swap type, and which of your lists, with its subscribers. That date is theirs to choose, so it is already on the card.
They send is what they offer back: the type and their list, with its subscribers. Its date reads You pick, because you choose it from their calendar when you accept.
The chip on the right counts down to expiry. Under their name, Counter Offer means this request answers one of yours, and Does not affect response rate means the share date left you less than 5 days to answer, so the request does not count towards your response rate either way. When they are buying the slot rather than trading, They pay and the price, marked Paid booking, take the place of They send.

Open the card to see the request in full: their book with your list's numbers beside it, the link you would share and their message, and next to that their offer with their list's open and click rates.

Accept

Accept Swap opens a short form on the card. Confirm Swap at the bottom stays disabled until everything is there, and hovering it lists what is missing.

CancelDecline

Confirm Swap

Still needed to confirm:

Select the book to share
Pick the date they will promote your book

Confirm Swap stays disabled until the form is complete, and hovering it lists what is missing.

The book to share. Books their list does not accept are grayed out, marked Genre mismatch or Lead magnet not accepted.
The date they promote your book. View Their Calendar shows their open days; pick one.
Your book link, unless the book already has one saved. As when sending, you can tick I will provide the book link later only if that date is more than three days away.
A list and a type, if they offered several: Type (choose one) and Their Lists (Choose One) sit on the card itself.

Once you accept, the swap moves to Active Swaps for both of you.

What accepting does to other requests

Accepting can close other pending requests on the same list. Anything on the same date that cannot share it is declined for you: a Solo excludes everything else that day, a Feature excludes another Feature or a Solo, and Mentions only clash with a Solo. Requests that would break your same-book or same-author cooldown go the same way. Before this happens, a Conflicting Swaps box lists every request that will be declined and asks you to confirm. Those declines are permanent, and the other authors are told why.

Make a counter offer

Counter Offer answers with different terms instead of a plain no.

Counter Offer to Dana Marek

Your List (Locked)

You will send on: Sci-Fi Readers

This is the list they originally requested

What do you want to receive? *

SoloFeatureMention

What will you send? *

SoloFeatureMention

CancelSend Counter Offer

A counter offer keeps your list fixed and lets you change the date, your book, and both swap types.

Your list is locked to the one they asked for. Everything else is yours to set: which of their lists you want, the date they share your book, your book, what you want to receive and what you will send, your link and a message. They receive it as a new request on their own Received Requests tab, marked Counter Offer, with up to 5 days to answer, less if the date you picked for them to share comes sooner. Your original request is closed, and a counter offer counts as a response.

Decline

Decline asks for an optional message, which the other author sees on their card. Declining counts as a response, so it never hurts your response rate; letting the request expire does.

Paid requests

When an author buys a slot instead of trading, accepting opens Confirm Paid Promotion with the buyer, book, type, date and price. Their card is charged the moment you accept, on your own Stripe account; BookSparker keeps a 10 percent fee, plus VAT on that fee where it applies to you, and Stripe pays you out on the payout schedule you set in Stripe. You need to have completed Stripe onboarding for paid slots before you can accept one.

Swap Pending Upgrade

Every plan has a monthly swap limit, checked for both authors when a request is accepted. If you are at yours, you cannot accept until you upgrade. If the sender is at theirs, the swap is accepted but held: Swap Pending Upgrade explains that they have 48 hours to upgrade, and the swap is canceled automatically if they do not. When the share date is less than three days away there is no time to wait, and the request is canceled straight away.

Common questions

Why is a book grayed out?

Their list does not take it. Either its genre is not among the list's target categories, or it is a lead magnet and the list does not accept those.

Why does the card not show when I would be promoted?

Because you have not chosen yet, which is why They send reads You pick. Their share date is fixed when they ask; yours is picked from their calendar when you accept.

What happens if I do nothing?

The request expires after 5 days, or when its share date ends at midnight Eastern time if that comes first, and counts as unanswered, which lowers your response rate. A request that gave you less than the full 5 days does not count either way.

Can I change my mind after accepting?

You can ask to move a share date, or cancel with a reason. Both are covered in confirm swaps and change dates.

Respond to swap requests