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

The speed at which that bridge collapsed makes it unstoppable. I suppose with H2G2, it feels more like running around, trying to shore up bits with duck tape and tie-ribs and hope it will hold. It looks like the site is now back into some sort of shape where you can invite someone new to have a look without being dragged to a front page from the past and error messages galore. (OK, I still get timeout messages on 'my conversations' most days, but at least I stay logged on if I want to). I realise that legacy software can be very tricky, especially when the original programmer is not around to explain why you definitely shouldn't delete that little line of innocent but obsolete looking code, especially with all the different skins that have evolved over the years. (I have past experience where we migrated our database to another software package, resulting in me checking the contents page by page for three months, because of stricter data formatting than the old package).

But in the end it is about people visiting the site, sticking around, looking past the front page, subscribing and contributing.

Back to the bridge thing. Maintenance is important. We have the Dutch sayings 'Goedkoop is duurkoop' and 'Voor een dubbeltje op de eerste rang willen zitten', effectively meaning that you can't expect quality if you go for the cheap option. The trouble is, for large projects it is mandatory to request quotations across Europe. Usually, the cheapest bid wins. It is very hard to be sure that all bids encompass the same work/materials/process quality control though. The cheapest bid usually misses things that the more expensive ones have included.

This week we have seen that in Russia, things can collapse even without a reason other than no maintenance whatsoever or poor build quality because 80% of the money wasn't spent on building something sturdy.

True that!

Yes indeed!

10 print books! Wow

It's impressive, really.

Let's make some more. Oh, we are already in the process to do so.

Does Lulu also show how many copies have been sold?

No, it doesn't, unfortunately (or not). But there they are.

Do you know what would help sales the most? If people would go on Lulu, or Amazon, if they buy from there, or Goodreads, and post reviews of the ones they've read. Positive ones would be nice.

Believe it or not, online book purchasers like to use reader reviews as guidelines for purchases.