I try not to depend overmuch on those Amazon covers; I upload alternate user-provideds whenever I can.

I've found that (usually) you can at least hang on to a user-provided cover after you've severed your ties to everyone else -- provided that you add the cover first, before you do entry cleanups and suchlike.

Not sure what to make of that Chris thing. Nervous-making to see a database site discard its database admin w/o any replacement in view. Odd. Particularly the dude who'd fixed so much that was broken -- from my perspective, anyway. My impression is that he had a Wow! Huge! Massive! Impact on a relatively small population (foreign lang users), but the population at large didn't see/experience a viseral benefit along that line.

the promised author system overhaul

Gah. Lesson of the past: Grab catalog backups omg!