making the 2nd or later book in a series free

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've read On a Pale Horse and I did enjoy it.

I reread it recently, and it didn't hold up all that well. I was a big fan back in the 80s. It was OK, but I wouldn't seek it out.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

HHGTTG started as a radio series. The books came later. So the books were derived from the radio series.

Yes, it was a "radio" play, not a even dramatic reading.

Sometimes DA finished writing an episode while it had started broadcasting.

He loved the whooshing sound of deadlines going past. Someone practically had to stand over him with a stick with pointy bits to get him to write. *So of course the original radio production is far better than the book(s)*. Which over time had less actual new content. An opposite kind of book series to Discworld.

I didn't much care for the 4th book and not at all for the 5th.

Oddly the idea of a play with only voices and sound effects predated Radio. Budapest, or some such place, had plays by phone long before 1921 voice radio debut.

The most famous comedy radio series (not a serial, the HHGTTG was pretty much a serial, or meant to be) before that was maybe the Goon Show.

The Goon Show ran 1951 to 1960, so early repeats would have been recorded on 78s and later on magnetic tape. Hence plenty is missing. Only from mid 1950s was there tape copies for overseas sales.

Round the Horn: 1965 to 1968.

Those were not serials, but episodic series, so less impetus for novelisation.

There are no lost Dr Who Episodes. Only deliberately destroyed 16mm (outdoors bits) and re-used Video tape (only saving £85 a reel in 1975. I was there when BBC Accountants insisted on this!)