Hello Denis,
A nice idea….If only things in life, and publishing, were that simple; but they never are! John did endeavour to find another solution, such as a lower cost slimmed down version with MacMillan. He was also investigating other publishers, but clearly no viable solution emerged. In addition, any use of Patrick’s name on a product needs approval from his executors, so a ‘Patrick Moore Yearbook’ by anyone other than MacMillan would not be legal. The Yearbooks involved a *massive* amount of work from John as Editor and while I had completed my sections and others had almost finished theirs, much had not been written, because the plug was pulled in January (a couple of months before the usual deadline).
Outside the context of the proper paper book there is no way that everyone involved would be able to muster the enthusiasm to generate a pdf, which would look nothing like the classic Patrick Moore Yearbook. The main content and editing tasks alone would require many man-weeks of hard graft from John, for a pdf product that would be a very poor shadow of the old Yearbook…..and, no payment either.
I am happy to e-mail anyone the Word document and 24 jpeg figures for my Comets, Eclipses and Minor Planets sections for 2017….but they are just that…a Word document and jpegs……
Regards,
Martin