I'm sorry to hear about you shutting down the site Jan, I know you have been putting a lot of effort into the site.
However, the site like many should remain up, the information was originally put there because you wanted to contribute a website to bowlers seeking information and history, well you have done that. The fact it is not complete is frustrating, but frustrating to you alone, information in any form is difficult to get, most bowlers are happy to have some information given to them, it is better than nothing, but it is simply history and it needs to be recorded, and slowly if it must.
As you know in 1987, we tried to put together a book of the history of bowling in Australia, we knew it was not going to be complete because there are so many other groups around that were not part of the ATBC at the time. We gathered the people we believed to be the best and most knowledgeable, they had all this stuff in their heads because they were there and remembered it all. We had them write the book for us, because like yourself no-one knew who we were. The information regarding records took many people a few months to put together, and they were part of the ATBC at the time, the records were in draws, cabinets and boxes and at peoples homes, but eventually we got most of them, and we were very proud of what we achieved.
We spent around $50,000 to produce 6000 books for a bowling population of over 200,000, membership of ATBC at the time was over 120,000. We were prepared to do a second print, because of the popularity of such a book.
Anyway we invited people to our book launch, including the best bowlers and newspaper people, and bowling industry notables, we invited TV but they did not come, we had some drinks and nibbles, did some speeches, and after all that we got a little publicity in the print media, nothing on TV and some exposure in the bowling magazines of the time.
After all that, we still had to sell all these books, otherwise our business was in trouble. We got in touch with AMF who graciously took a 1000 books off our hands, they distributed them to all there centres in Australia, each centre had 20 odd books each to sell to more than 1000 bowlers in their centre, we got in touch with every other centre in the country and sent them posters and letters telling them about the book, we even sent some free books to peruse, we did not get a great response. we were then stuck with many books as you can imagine. We believed that it was an easy task, how wrong could we have been.
As you know we also have a proshop, and through that proshop we sold more than 3000 books individually over the next 10 years, we still sell them today, and the book remains the only one ever written on bowling in Australia.
Most bowlers out there are glad to share their achievements, some are even glad to share their failures, some simply can't remember what happened that far back. If it was the 60' or 70's I can understand they just can't remember, it takes time to squeeze this information out of people, you just need to keep chipping away.
Regarding websites that are not up to date, most websites are electronic business cards for people sharing information around the web, your's is that as well as mine is that. I spend 10 hours a week on my site updating prices, images, text and generally making it better, I'm sure you do similar if not more on your's, it is something we choose to do.
Keep up the good work.
Regards,
Patrick Birtig
