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The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

Douglas Adams

2002

351 Ungluers have wished for this Work

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The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of the The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out of work actor. Together this dynamic pair begin their journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitch Hiker's Guide "A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have" and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox - the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out to lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ball-point pens he has bought over the years.

Why unglue this? Have your say.

eric (May 3, 2013, 12:18 p.m.)
We finally talked to the literary agent for the Adams estate. Apparently, because of the movie licensing deal, Disney is involved with everything Hitchhiker, and most everything fun that people want to do with Hitchhiker is really hard to do. So ungluing anything Hitchhiker is not going to happen even if we get a million ungluers. On the other hand, Dirk Gently... https://unglue.it/work/120338/

robinmonks (Aug. 14, 2012, 6:39 p.m.)
Remember; none of this accounts for if the book is freely available other works by the same author and derivative works (such as films) can greatly benefit, making and replacing income for the author and publisher. Opening up a book does not suddenly mean everything connected to it becomes unprofitable.

Additionally, bestsellers is over all time I believe, and not for a limited time frame. Just because a book sold X copies since release doesn't mean it's still going to sell that same amount going forward, and even less likely to do so in the author's lifetime.

RightsatUnglueit (June 14, 2012, 2:38 p.m.)
Most of the agents and conventional publishers we’ve been talking to have told us they are concerned about the CC impact on future income from ebooks. Here are some of the metrics for the numbers of Ungluers we think are needed to catch the Rights Holders’ attention.

Hitchhiker’s Guide, for example, in its most recent trade paperback and Kindle editions, hovers around the top 1,000 bestsellers on Amazon. The expanded paperback is #23 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Space Opera. (Not sure why its also #40 under women’s fiction/single women, but maybe that’s just Arthur Dent’s charm.)

Of course we don’t know what actual sales numbers create these Amazon rankings, but they’re at least a guideline to ranking all the editions for sale, (Amazon’s ranking for the original mass market and UK editions are somewhat lower.)

We think that in order to get a conversation started with the Douglas Adam estate and his publishers in the US. and UK it might take at least 29,000 Ungluers willing to give $10 each in support of a CC edition of Hitchhiker’s Guide.

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