h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I read your book.

Just wanted to say that I entirely apologise for mentally going oh, the Wainwrights, flying off them all in a paraglider thingy, in a year, yeah, cool, in a mild sort of way when you first mentioned it, and basically wildly underestimating what an AWESOME thing to have done it was. Which became clear from the first few pages of the book.

So, jolly good, what an AWESOME thing to have done. Literally. In awe.

Also, I enjoyed the book itself. Very readable, even if, as you may have gathered, I know sod all about paragliding.

Anyway. That is all.

Wow, thank you. That may very well be the best review it's had! Any chance you could post words to that effect on Amazon?

Happy to actually.

And, would you mind if I wrote a review for here? For the Post?

Not that the one is contingent on the other, mark you.

Very kind of and wonderfully worded too!

And of course I'd very much like a review in the Post - crack on!

Thanks again.

*grins* 'Crack on' very much does not describe my work rate when it comes to writing.

I'll let you know when Dmitri and the gang have it scheduled.

That'd be great, thanks. In the meantime, if you can think of any other ways of promoting the book, do let me know.

(Off topic, you might be interested to know I now have a third book on sale - my original paragliding book "Prepare to Fly"... in Chinese! A dude from Hainan contacted me by email, and volunteered to translate it. It's out now.)

So it took me a while to write it, as predicted, but the Post team are less dilatory then me, so it's already up: A87849698

And now I realise I didn't say 'Cooooooooooooooooooool!!!! China!!!' which is what I thought. The only way you make any money in my business (Teaching English as Foreign Language) is if you write a best selling textbook, and what you are really hoping for is best selling in China. The first people to crack that market bought a tropical island on the proceeds.

As for promoting the book, I do have two thoughts, neither particularly original. 1) if you are planning to write more books, or even just have more exploits, then I might recommend a more concentrated website (all your stuff in one place) and definitely more social media presence. SM is a huge time suck, though, so it's only worth doing for long term gains.

2) I bought the book for my Dad. He's a former aviation engineer, whose hobbies are sailing and cycling, and he belongs to clubs for both. I suspect people in sports clubs, not just paragliding ones, might be worth exploring. Dad liked the book, btw, but he recommends more maps and would have liked more pictures.

Thanks so much!

I'm aware of some of the weaknesses of the book. Lack of pictures and maps is certainly up there. I took almost no photos when doing the thing - I was concentrating so hard on getting the thing done, there wasn't really space in my head to think about pictures to make it look good. Maps probably would help, but they'd need to be licensed from whoever produces them, which was a level of complication I wasn't ready for. Pictures and maps would both have required colour printing on the interior of the book, which would have seriously increased the price. It was a tradeoff, really, and while the end result isn't ideal, I think it's the best it could have been.

Thanks again for your kind comments.