The Sad Decline of Rough Guides

Link to Original Story

Google has bought Frommers. That rang a bell: an industry insider told me recently that Penguin quietly tried to sell Rough Guides to Frommers a couple of years ago, but “wanted too much” for it. Ho-hum. Travel publishing is in a really tricky place.

Now I’m not an industry analyst, and I’m not in travel tech, so if you want reasoned, insightful comment, stop reading now and click the links. I’m just a guidebook author. I whinge.

Disclosure: I’ve never written for Frommers. Apart from a bit of freelance editing, in 17 years I’ve never worked for any travel publishers other than Rough Guides.

Back when I started, Rough Guides were huge. They had massive brand recognition in the UK, chiefly on the back of the “Rough Guide to…” TV series – presented most famously by Magenta Devine and Sankha Guha – which ran in the late 80s & early 90s, catching people’s imagination like no TV travel show (arguably, no travel idea in any media) before or since. Lonely Planet had books everywhere, of course, but they were kind of boring, a bit earnest and mundane.

Lonely Planet was Microsoft. Rough Guide was Apple.

Then the Rough Guide founders sold the company to Penguin Books in a two-stage deal, completed in 2002. In ten years since, Penguin killed the brand. Rough Guides went from being a big fish in the small sea of travel publishing to a minnow in the ocean that is the Pearson media conglomerate. Penguin already owned DK, with a huge and globally successful travel brand of its own; RGs became an add-on, with fewer resources and a succession of managing directors who tried to crowbar it into a corporate strategy that was less and less interested in anything that didn’t sell in Jamie Oliver quantities.

Sales reps had bigger fish to fry than the 7th edition of the RG to Farflungistan, so the books – frustratingly, virtually impossible to find outside the UK anyway – began to fade from view in their home market. Cartography and other production processes were hived off to Penguin’s Delhi office: cheaper, but not better. Spinoff pocket guide series came, failed and went. Every year or two came another promise to revamp the RG website to bring it up to LP’s standard; it never happened. RGs remain pretty much invisible online. Ebooks? Digital publishing of any kind? Electronic rights? Negligible.

Those ten years have poleaxed RGs, turning it from a leader into a follower. There’s been a cull of titles, with several dozen 2012/2013 updates “postponed” (read: cancelled): one desperate author has had five of his six titles pulled. The website remains an embarrassment, with the promise of something better to be unveiled, er, sometime soon. The books have been redesigned, though – RGs now feature colour pictures throughout, just like it’s 2003.

The thing that made Rough Guides cool (or, if you prefer, successful) – the voice – has gone. Authors are punch-drunk. Editors are overworked. Even though guidebooks remain trusted (intriguingly, see here for an opposite spin) their raison d’etre has been called into question. What travel brands are cool? None. Content isn’t cool anymore: there’s too much of it.

Devices are cool. Content is just content.

Frommer's Was Purchased by Google, Then Sold, Then Resold

Tnooz on the Frommer Sale back to Arthur

More discussions on the sale of Frommer's printed guidebooks back to Arthur himself, with comment input from some of the biggest players in the guidebook world.

The Frommers journey has come full circle, as the company’s original founder Arthur Frommer has re-taken the helm of the brand he created back in 1957.

With the Frommer’s Facebook page dormant since February, the brand sure could use a little reinvigoration. The powers-that-be at Google have pretty much brought the brand to full radio silence as they integrated all of the content they purchased into the Google+ Local product over the past few months.

A Google spokesperson sent over the following statement:

We’re focused on providing high-quality local information to help people quickly discover and share great places, like a nearby restaurant or the perfect vacation destination. That’s why we’ve spent the last several months integrating the travel content we acquired from Wiley into Google+ Local and our other Google services. We can confirm that we have returned the Frommer’s brand to its founder and are licensing certain travel content to him.

Now that the content has been integrated into the product, Google has sold the company back to its founder. The terms of the deal were undisclosed, but it’s very clear that Frommer intends to continue the print line of books moving forward.

Arthur Frommer told the Associated Press that he was looking forward to getting started again after selling the brand to Simon & Schuster in 1977. It’s a very happy time for me. We will be publishing the Frommer travel guides in ebook and print formats and will also be operating the travel site Frommers.com.

It appears that he did not purchase all assets, and that Google will continue to own certain content that will then be licensed back to Frommer’s. What content will be licensed to Frommer remains unclear.

Travel Guidebook Advice from The Economist

Guidebook Writer Guidelines

The Guidebook Conundrum via The Economist

More stuff on the travel guidebook crisis

LAST month, just days after the BBC announced the sale of Lonely Planet to a wealthy American investor for an £80m ($121m) loss, Google quietly signed the death sentence for the print publication of Frommer's guidebooks. The remaining portion of the brand will be digested into the corners of the Google network, and the once-famous guidebook series will soon cease to exist.

In an era of pop-up restaurants and 140-character updates, guidebook publishing has suffered hugely. Both business and casual travellers do ever more of their trip research online, where sites like Tripadvisor and Wikivoyage can provide free data quickly and precisely. The resulting decrease in book-buying has been disastrous for the publishers. Frommer's US sales dropped from $34m to $18m between 2006 and 2012. Lonely Planet's dropped from $25m to $18m over the same period. Combine those sales figures with the high costs of research and the guidebook-publishing industry's demise looks certain.


Yet there remains some demand for expert travel advice from non-digital sources. Many travellers, particularly those lacking expensive international mobile data plans or access to an internet connection, still rely on physical guidebooks to research and navigate a destination. For example, Chris McGinnis, the editor of the Bay Area Traveler Blog, says he still takes portions of guidebooks with him when visiting a new destination. “Most busy business travellers just want the facts, fast,” he explains. “They don’t always have time to pick through the get-what-you-pay-for free or user-generated sites. Ripping a few pertinent pages out of an edited, fact-checked guidebook and packing them into my carry-on bag still serves me well. But I'm slowly replacing those ripped-up guidebooks with digital versions stored on my iPad.”

The value provided by a well-researched guidebook is precisely why their buyers are willing to pay the extra few dollars for curated content. “Accurate, quality content and information is always in demand,” Daniel Houghton, the new COO of Lonely Planet, told Gulliver. As part of the editorial process, guidebook writers take special measures to review a hotel or restaurant in objective terms. Reviews from sites like Tripadvisor or Yelp, conversely, can be influenced by a host of external factors.

To be successful in the future, guidebooks will need to manage the tricky balance between the content they provide for nothing online and the material they supply in book form, while making both separately profitable. Lonely Planet puts the majority of its content in its physical guidebooks or downloadable products, while hosting a spectrum of digital articles and a community online. Frommer’s, conversely, put the entirety of its guidebook content on the web for nothing; but the growth in its online revenues did not keep pace with the decline in book sales.

Jason Clampet, online editor at Frommer's prior to its sale to Google, explained, “Guidebook companies know that growth will come from digital, but they're all legacy print operations paralysed by fiefdoms and an older skill set. In the same way that we see lots of digital start-ups fall flat on their faces when they try content, old-school content companies just bumble when it comes to digital.” Until there’s a better way for travellers to use guidebook data on their devices, many will continue to shop at their local bookstore for a physical guidebook. But as data plans improve and digital devices evolve, the guidebook publishers will need to adapt to survive.

The New Digital Rulers at Lonely Planet, via Nashville

This Kid is the New Ruler at Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet was recently sold by the BBC at staggering loss to an American billionaire who made his money selling discounted cheap smokes to Americans hooked on nicotine. He now has a new team in Nashville eager to smoke LP and marry it to new technology. Their biolines show almost no background experience, but plenty of bravado. Go figure.

NC2 Home Website

Arthur Frommer Gets Back his Trademark

Arthur Frommer and Daughter Pauline

Google Buys Frommer, Ends Printed Guides, then Sells the Whole Mess back to Arthur

What in the world is going on with Frommer's Guides and Arthur himself? This is starting to sound like a bad parody from The Onion. Where is the travel guru gonna get enough money to restart printed travel guidebooks? I assume he is doing OK, but this is an enormous endevour, God Bless you Arthur, but you have now promised dreams beyond your bounds.

Arthur Frommer, the avuncular, erudite travel icon who 57 years ago inspired a generation of cost-conscious Americans to pack their bags withEurope on 5 Dollars a Day, is taking back control of his travel guidebook brand from Google and intends to resume publishing Frommer guidebooks.

"It's a very happy time for me," Frommer, 83, told The Associated Press. "We will be publishing the Frommer travel guides in ebook and print formats and will also be operating the travel site Frommers.com."

Skift.com reported last month that Google - which had purchased the Frommer brand from Wiley last year for a reported $22 million - was "quietly pulling the plug" on print publication of Frommer travel guides.

Financial terms of the deal between Frommer and Google, which is using Frommer's content on Google Plus Local and other services, were not disclosed.

The move comes during a turbulent time for the print guidebook industry, which is facing stiff competition from such user-generated alternatives as TripAdvisor and Yelp. Last month, BBC Worldwide agreed to sell Lonely Planet to a Nashville-based digital media company for less than half what it paid for the company in 2007.

Huff Post Travel Writer Still has Faith in Printed Guides

A travel writer and blogger at Huffington Post thinks printed travel guidebooks are not yet dead. I enjoy my collection of old and often rare travel guidebooks, but I think that printed travel writing is on the wall, so to speak. They are going away, given new technologies that make traveling with gadgets the future. Just watch your gadget, as thugs around the world prefer your IPad and IPhone to your old, used paper travel guidebook.

Jeanne Oliver on why Printed Travel Guidebooks will Survive

March was a bad month for travel guidebooks. First the BBC sold the venerable Lonely Planet brand to NC2 Media, an obscure digital distribution company backed by former tobacco tycoon Brad Kelley. Then, in a one-two punch, Google discontinued the print editions of Frommer's guidebooks. Is that it? Are print guidebooks being edged out by online content? Some commentators think so.

I'm not so sure. I've been on both sides of the divide, first writing guidebooks for Frommer's and Lonely Planet and now publishing the kinds of travel-planning websites that are supposed to replace guidebooks: croatiatraveller.com and frenchrivieratraveller.com. While a growing percentage of my visitors are accessing my websites through mobile devices, the overwhelming majority still consult my websites from their laptop or PC before leaving home.

I'm happy to provide digital content and certainly gobble it up when I plan a trip. I research online, download the relevant apps on my smartphone and put a free ebook or two on my tablet. For a weekend getaway, that's usually enough. If I can do without a guidebook, I will. But, for a first-time visit to a foreign country, you can bet that a dead-tree guidebook will be part of the mix. Here's why:

No Data Connection Necessary

More hotels are finally offering free wifi. Great! But the connection is not always speedy in all parts of the hotel. So, I point my device around like a dowser, watching the bars on my screen until I find the sweet spot where the connection is strong enough to get online, which is usually in the lobby.

Away from wifi, a smartphone requires a data connection which is where matters get complicated. First the phone must be "unlocked" if possible (it may now be illegal in America). Then, how many megabytes do I need on a prepaid SIM card with a data plan? 150? 500? Getting it set up invariably involves wasting a good part of the morning in a phone shop and the cost can be more than a guidebook. In France, a prepaid SIM card with a data plan is about €20 ($25).

Rick Steves Believes Printed Travel Guidebooks are not Dead

Rick Steves

Rick Steves on Printed Travel Guidebooks

Last month, three things happened that were interesting to me as a guidebook writer: After Google purchased the venerable Frommer's guidebook series, they announced that they would no longer keep them in print. http://goo.gl/WbquL I read an article about the "rapid decline of the printed guidebook." http://tinyurl.com/cgm57af And I got my biggest royalty check ever in payment for my guidebook sales.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a coffee with Arthur Frommer at the Washington DC Travel and Adventure Show. While he sold the guidebook series with his name on it a long time ago, Arthur still gives spirited talks at such shows all around the country. The first edition of his GI's Guide to Traveling in Europe, which eventually became the groundbreaking Europe on $5 a Day, was published the year I was born (1955). I have a copy of it on the bookshelf in my office as a kind of personal and thankful reminder of how Arthur’s work gave people like my parents the confidence to travel independently through Europe back when that was a new thing for middle-class Americans. You could make a case that without Arthur Frommer opening that door for my family in 1969, I’d still be teaching piano lessons.

I loved traveling with Arthur’s book for a decade (along with the backpackers’ guide, Let’s Go: Europe). Arthur’s personality — his sass, elegance, and Ivy League respect for culture and language — along with his passion for making Europe accessible (first to his fellow GIs, and ultimately to a whole generation of American travelers) inspired me. Way back in 1984, Arthur invited me to appear on his cable TV show and introduced me as “Rick Steves, the new Steve Birnbaum, Eugene Fodor, Temple Fielding of the travel guide industry.” At the time, his prediction seemed a little wacky, but — in part because most publishers have found it's cheaper to write and update guidebooks by committee rather than employ individual personalities — my generation has failed to produce a class of well-known guidebook writers. Arthur Frommer's endorsement was a huge break for me, and even though I had a hard time believing it, I used the quote a lot.

In an age of consolidation, when only big is viable, guidebook publishers are big and few in number. The major guidebook series in the USA are Fodor’s, Frommer's, Lonely Planet, Dorling Kindersley, and Rick Steves. And for many of these, the future looks shaky. Lonely Planet was owned by BBC in London for less than six years before they unloaded to a tobacco tycoon it for less than half what they originally paid. Its fate is unknown. Frommer's was purchased in August of 2012 by Google, who recently announced that they will let almost all of their 350 titles go out of print — leaving the company with piles of data to shuffle into its searchable banks, but no bookshelf presence. Dorling Kindersley (or "DK," publishers of the glossy, illustrated Eyewitness and Top 10 series) is owned by Penguin, and Fodor’s is owned by Random House — and now that those two publishing giants have agreed to a merger, DK and Fodor’s are likely to merge with them, creating more uncertainty.

And the Rick Steves line? We’re as strong and determined as ever. This week, I’m setting out with a band of 25 fellow researchers with the goal to visit in person virtually every sight, hotel, restaurant, launderette, train station, boat dock, and other place mentioned in our guidebooks, as we make them up-to-date for next year.

I think guidebook publishers are challenged in the same way news corporations are. It’s expensive for news services to pay for individual correspondents to bring home the news when it’s just out there on the Internet for all to scarf up — and viewers don’t necessarily respond to more costly, higher-quality journalism. And, in the case of TV news, the limited funds are much better spent on a good-looking anchorperson to read the news rather than quality people to gather it. That's why top-notch investigative journalism is at a critical low point these days.

Considering the modest profit margin for publishing a guidebook, publishers have a similar problem in hiring trained researchers to actually research their books in person. And new crowdsourcing alternatives to guidebooks (like TripAdvisor, CruiseCritic, Booking.com, Yelp, Urbanspoon, and so on) give travelers the impression that they have all the reviews they’ll ever need from other consumers. With the increasing popularity of these options, a tough business equation has become even tougher.

All of these review-based websites are certainly useful and informative, and I use them myself when traveling somewhere new. But I believe that — just as you wouldn't want to get all of your news from amateur bloggers — casual online reviewers take a hit-or-miss approach that isn't always an improvement on an experienced guidebook researcher with a trained eye. Most users reviewing hotels on TripAdvisor have experienced a few dozen hotels in their lives; a professional travel writer has inspected and evaluated hundreds, or even thousands. And, while these sites are particularly helpful for sleeping and eating, they do virtually nothing to explain what you're seeing when you get there. Guidebooks' sightseeing advice, self-guided museum tours, and neighborhood walks help you engage with and understand the place you've traveled so far to see, with a depth that crowdsourced websites don't even attempt. For all of these reasons, I find crowdsourced sites a handy tool to enhance, but not replace, the information I learn from a good guidebook.

Complicating matters is the advent of digital, non-print formats, which challenge traditional book-business thinking. But, while ebooks seem exciting, print sales still dominate (for now, at least); only about 15 percent of total guidebook sales are electronic.

Are guidebooks dead? Not yet, that’s for sure. I’m flying to Egypt and the Holy Land as I write this, my bag heavy with Lonely Planet, DK, and Bradt guides to Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories. The question can be interpreted in two ways: Will people still be traveling with good old-fashioned print guidebooks in tow? And is the entire concept of a guidebook (whether in print or electronic) still viable? My take: For another decade, travelers will be toting print editions of guidebooks. Slowly, print will be replaced by digital. There will be a battle between various electronic information services, including guidebooks. Many users will opt for GPS-driven, crowd-researched apps. But plenty of others will still use guidebooks in their futuristic digital format — probably souped up with streaming video and GPS features. And, God willing, I’ll still be out there making sure mine are accurate and up-to-date.

Travel Writers Angst Blog from Carl Parkes

Arthur Frommer Gets His Brand Name Returned

Arthur Frommer and his Daughter

Arthur Frommer Gets Back his Brand

Arthur Frommer gets back his namesake, but what does this possibly mean? He sold his guidebook series many years ago, and his daughter has attempted to keep it in the news just as the travel publishing world was collapsing. He doesn't really need to keep the brand going, but his name remains golden in a travel publishing world where few words and brands carry such weight.

Skift reports some of the details. The real story remains to be told.

I was interviewed years ago by Arthur Frommer on the Sausalito side of the Golden Gate Bridge just as the first edition of my Southeast Asia Handbook was released by Moon Publications. He was a very smart and quick guy who understood the industry and the venerable history of Indonesia Handbook from Bill Dalton. The interview was later shown on his travel section on cable TV. It was a moment in my short history as a travel writer, and I have always very much appreciated his educational and emotional approach to travel.

Long may his flag wave.

Google Pulls the Plug on Printed Frommer's Travel Guidebooks

An amazing Collection of Frommer Guides

I was once interviewed by Arthur Frommer on the Sausalito side of the Golden Gate Bridge, just after the launch of my 1st travel guidebook for Moon Publications, Southeast Asia Handbook. He quickly went over my sample copy, then boom, straight into the interview. He had all the background on Moon Publications and Bill Dalton, and asked me who funded the book. Well, I told him, I did. No advances, which worked in my favor since I got a fine 20% of net royalties. First royalty check was over $12,000, pretty amazing for any travel writer in any point in time. The interview was later shown on the Frommer show on The Travel Channel.

Skift writer Jason Clampet talks about the sudden end of Frommer's printed travel guidebooks.

Skift on Frommer's

CNN Travel on Why Google is Pulling the Plug on Frommer's

Europe on $5 a Day by Arthur Frommer

CNN on Why Google is Pulling the Plug on Frommer's Printed Guidebooks

Travel reviews are valuable online. In print? Not so much. That's why Google is killing the paper edition of Frommer's.

By Verne Kopytoff

FORTUNE -- Spotting a tourist used to be easy. Just look for someone toting around a travel guide. Today, vacationers are organizing their trips entirely online. All they need to carry with them is a smartphone to occasionally look up tourist attractions and navigate around town.

Travel guide publishers are in upheaval amid this new reality. Sales of guidebooks are down sharply as people instead turn to sites like TripAdvisor for hotel and restaurant reviews. The industry's decline was hammered home recently with two big developments.

The latest came Thursday with word that Google (GOOG) planned to kill the print edition of Frommer's, the travel guide giant it acquired last year. Google declined to comment, although Skift, a travel news site, reported that Google's editors had already broken the news to authors of some upcoming titles. Frommer's has long been a Bible for globetrotters, and its extinction in print, at least, would be a big loss for the travel guide industry. Google could continue to publish digital books under the Frommer's name and keep Frommer's website alive, however.

The second development, the BBC's sale of Lonely Planet, happened earlier this month. The British broadcaster disclosed plans to sell the guide-book publisher for $78 million, far less than the nearly $200 million it had originally paid. The buyer, NC2 Media, a Nashville-based media company controlled by reclusive billionaire Brad Kelley, promises to continue publishing travel guides.

But the huge loss the BBC took on the sale highlights the difficulty travel guide businesses face in the digital age. "If you go back 15 or 20 years, a guidebook was the only source of information for a traveler to go on," said Stephen Palmer, managing director for Lonely Planet. "Now people are using six to eight different sources of information to plan that trip. We believe the guidebook still has a role in that mix."

The decline in guidebook sales started with the recession, which decimated leisure travel. The influx of mobile devices compounded the problem. Bookstores like Borders, a big source of travel guide sales, shut down en masse. Free online travel information became more readily available, further eliminating the need to pay $30 for a guidebook.

Major travel booking engines like Expedia (EXPE), Orbitz (OWW) and TripAdvisor (TRIP) all make hotel reviews from users available to people deciding where to stay, for example. AirBnB and VRBO.com, which focus on private vacation rentals, have similar critiques. You'd have to go pretty far off the beaten path to find a hotel, restaurant, or bar that hasn't been praised or panned somewhere online. The question is whether anonymous critics are as trustworthy as professional travel writers.

Travel guides must also compete against free open source guides, which are written by volunteers. Wikitravel and Wikivoyage, a branch of Wikipedia, offer free online travel tips for cities and countries around the world. Their prose tends to be utilitarian compared with some of the professionally written guides. But they generally give a decent overview, with the usual details about hotels, tourist sites, and how to get around.

Google's brief history with travel guides started when it acquired Frommer's along with the Unofficial Guide series from John Wiley & Sons for $22 million. It wasn't Google first foray into print, however. A year earlier, it had bought Zagat Survey, best known for its restaurant ratings. Google planned to incorporate both Frommer's and Zagat reviews into its online products. The rise of Yelp (YELP) and TripAdvisor had showed that reviews could be valuable.

What Google would do with Frommer's print business was always a question, however. The match between the online Goliath and an older school publisher seemed odd. A number of Frommer's titles scheduled for release in February and earlier this month are now overdue. The most recent titles published focusing on Napa and Sonoma in California's Wine Country along with Banff and the Canadian Rockies, may be the last to be printed with Frommer's name.

Palmer, from Lonely Planet, said that the demise of Frommer's print guides would be an opportunity for his business to gain market share. But he's still waiting to see how the situation plays out. Lonely Planet sells around 5 million guidebooks annually, Palmer said. But sales are lower than they were before the recession.

U.S. guidebook sales are down 10% to 20% since 2008, he said. Recently, sales have stabilized, providing a glimmer of hope. To reach a bigger audience, Lonely Planet has started a new series of books, Discover, that are for more mainstream travelers who must make due with shorter vacations. "I don't think anyone is pretending that sales of travel guides aren't down," Palmer said. "But they aren't off a cliff. What we're seeing now is a level of stability."

Like many travel guide publishers, Lonely Planet is investing in its online business. And like many media companies, news included, the transition is difficult. Lonely Planet, of course, uses its website to sell print guidebooks along with pushing digital copies. It also makes money from online advertising and for connecting visitors with hotel reservations and insurance, among other things.

In five years, Palmer said that even more people will use tablets and smartphones to plan their vacations. But some travelers will still prefer analog over digital, contrary to predictions about travel guides heading for a quick extinction. "I think there will be a place for books," Palmer said.

The Sudden Decline of Printed Travel Guidebooks, EBooks and Travel Apps

Let's All Be Travel Writers

The amazing decline in printed travel guidebooks. Also the decline in travel apps. It's a race to the bottom with some excellent if depressing charts and graphs.

Tnooz on the Decline of Travel Guidebooks, e books and Travel Apps

NB: This is a personal viewpoint by Jani Patokallio, a former publishing platform architect at Lonely Planet.

CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, put it simply when he famously proclaimed last year: “We expect DVD subscribers to decline every quarter… forever.” It does beg the wider question: does your business model relies on selling any type of paid content? If the answer is yes – welcome to Mr Hastings’s world.

Books

Many publishers continue to operate under the assumption that printed book sales are declining gradually or perhaps even plateauing. Unfortunately the data tells a different story: the decline appears to be accelerating. Here’s Nielsen Bookscan for the travel market.

That’s from the “Guidebook Category Report, Rolling, Period 13″ for 2006 to 2012. The trendline is a simple polynomial (n=2) best fit, and if it’s accurate, the market will halve by 2015. And while that sounds drastic, it’s by no means unprecedented, as the sales of CDs did pretty much the same thing between 2006 and 2009.

Of course, the market’s not quite homogenous: Lonely Planet’s been beating the trend, mostly by continuing to invest in print and absorbing customers from the rapidly-disappearing Frommers. But that just makes LP an even-bigger fish in an ever-shrinking pond. So can the white knights of digital paid content, e-books and mobile apps, save the publishing industry?

[See Link for Graph]

[See the Link for Information on EBooks and Travel Apps]

Lonely Planet and the Rapid Decline of Printed Travel Guidebooks

For the whole enchilada, click the Skift link below.

Jason Clampet on the Rapid Decline of Travel Guidebooks

Camels and Chocolate Advice: Never, Never, Never Write for Free

Monkey Travel Writer

Never Write for Free via Camels and Chocolate

Camels and Chocolate reports on her conflict with The Atlantic.

A few months back, a well-known band came to me via their publicist wanting me to promote an event they’re sponsoring. It was a cool concept, in a fun place, and it would allow me to check another item off my Life List. The kicker? They weren’t going to pay me for my time or my effort.

The sad thing is that I briefly toyed with the idea, and I might have green lit it had it not been for SVV. “You’re a professional. You’ve been working as a journalist for a decade. Your time, your knowledge, your experience—this is all incredibly valuable to a company. You’re not doing anything for free.” I tried to negotiate with them—something that as both a female and a Southerner I’ve always grappled with—but they weren’t budging. Not understanding what social media is about, or even the power of the press, they thought covering my expenses to attend the event—an event that, mind you, I would be working—was payment enough. And so after much debate, I turned down the opportunity last week with some regrets.

But you know what? After a few days to ponder this precarious situation, I’m glad I said no.

When did it become acceptable not to pay for a service? I logged my years of interning, I more than paid my dues, I’ve slowly worked my way up the ladder in this tumultuous media climate, something that was not easy, nor fun at times. To backtrack so much at this point in my career would be a completely wrong move. I don’t write for magazines whose rates don’t make penning a piece worth my time; since when do I spend days on a project making money for other people through promotion, sponsorships, advertising dollars and Lord knows how many other benefits that come cascading down the shoulders (and pockets) of the corporations that drive these things? The short answer: not now, not ever.

And this is where the Internet is at fault and possibly the economy, too. There are so many people out there perfectly willing to give away their talent for no charge—or, nearly as bad, $10 to $20 a post—that a company knows if you say no, there are 10 other writers who will say yes. But that doesn’t make it even remotely OK. That doesn’t mean you should buy into it. Because until enough of us band together and say this isn’t right, companies will continue to think they can exploit our talents.

I graduated from journalism school. Before that, I interned at magazines, newspapers, a TV station. I was a columnist for a publication at the age of 20. I’d worked on my first guidebook for one of the biggest travel brands in the world by 23. I was hired as a researcher for Harper’s while still an undergrad. I started at Newsweek the day after I graduated college. You’ll sometimes see my name in books. I’ve written for more than 50 national magazines and newspapers. I can’t remember the last time an all-access concert pass paid the rent. And what makes any company think that I will work for free, that I don’t deserve to get paid for the exercise?

You wouldn’t ask a surgeon to operate on your heart free of charge (or for front row seats at opera). You wouldn’t expect a plumber to come out and fix your pipes for no fee (or in exchange for a sandwich). Heck, you don’t even allow a server at a restaurant to deliver your food without leaving a tip on top of an already-hefty dinner bill. Why are writers and other creatives any different?

Women, in general, tend to get the short end of the stick, too. It’s a proven fact. In my experience, we’re also not very keen on bargaining, on asking for what we deserve. SVV has gotten four raises in less than four years at his current company; every one of them was because he went to his boss and said (in not so many words), hey, you know what? I’m awesome and I deserve to be paid for my awesomeness. You should give me X amount of dollars more for my skill and expertise. And you can guess what happened next: His boss did just that. Every last time.

I, on the other hand, have worked for some of the same editors for years and have never summoned the nerve to ask for an increased rate. In some ways, I’m just happy to still be able to say I’m a magazine writer. Many of my colleagues aren’t so fortunate anymore. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be so bold in the future, that I shouldn’t make it a goal to work on the power of bargaining. Saying no to the band, something that was far from easy, was a baby step in that direction.

A fellow journalist friend, a male, who was a bureau chief at Newsweek for a decade, told me how a political magazine recently came to him with the offer to write an in-depth, 5,000-word piece for their publication. If you’re not in the journalism industry, you should know: Such an offer is a writer’s gold. We’re never given the space to write the long-form narratives or op-eds we often dream about.

He did the smart thing and responded saying he’d love such a gig, but how much did it pay? “$500,” the editor wrote back, though the friend now thinks, looking back, that the rate might have even been lower than that. $500 for 5,000 words. Ten paltry cents per well-thought-out word. (To put it in perspective, most national magazines continue to pay $2 a word as a starting rate, with more money given to their more established writers, meaning if this was a legit publication, he should have been paid $10,000 for such a story.) Politely, he declined the assignment—he is after all, a well-known journalist, and to write such a story would take weeks of his time, weeks that could be spent elsewhere on much better paying gigs—at which point the editor shot back a very snarky retort saying that my friend should be honored to write such a piece for his magazine. Really? Is that truly what editors think these days? That well-trained, sought-after writers should be thankful for the chance to earn them money? Hardly.

My point here is to all you bloggers, to all you writers, to all you photographers, to all you creative types out there who feel like you’re not valued, here’s an epiphany: You’ll never be valued until you start to value yourself.

So I beg you: When you’re approached with such an opportunity, weigh the pros and cons. Is it a good career move? Are you getting anything meaningful out of it? What are you actually receiving for your time? Or is the company just trying to use you as one of these “cloud-sourced” money machines? Whether you’re a beginning blogger with 100 readers or a veteran with 100,000, you’re valuable. And don’t forget it either. Because until you start to see your own self worth, how can you expect others to recognize it, too?

My apologies to Camels and Chocolate for originally crediting this fine article to Nate Thayer. I'm not sure where I got the confusion, but I get the message. Oh, I also posted an article from Nate that seems somewhat similar to your post, so I think that's what happened. If you want me to remove this post, just let me know. I'm sure you've got my email, so no need to work this out over Twitter. And yes, I'm a real travel guidebook writer. Two Lowell Thomas Awards from SATW, blah, blah, blah

Unpaid Internships are a Scam

Travel is actually NOT a Waste of Time

Unpaid Internships are a Scam via Slate

Wednesday's conversation about writing for free on the Internet naturally segued into the hot topic of unpaid internships. One aspect of this that's often important in D.C. is unpaid internships at mission-driven nonprofits. If you're running a mission-driven nonprofit, then obviously you have to ask yourself what your mission is. If you think your mission includes promoting upward economic mobility and an economically and ethnically diverse talent pipeline, then obviously part of your expenditure profile should be making sure that people who can't afford to spend their summers mooching off their parents can get a shot at the valuable experience your internship program offers.

This—like the question of whether your internship program actually is a valuable experience—is really a question of whether you want to live up to your mission. When it comes to greedy for-profit firms, obviously the goal is to get useful work out of people for as little money as possible, and thus you have a different issue. And the relevant analytical issue is to ask what do unpaid internships crowd out? To a lot of people, it seems to go without saying that they crowd out paid labor, but that's not clear to me. In my industry, for example, there are no formal credentialing requirements, but in practice just about everyone has a bachelor's degree. What's interesting is that some people also have a master's degree.

Spending a year as an unpaid intern sounds like a financially unattractive option. But spending nine months getting a master's from Columbia Journalism School costs $53,346. So you have one firm that's cynically offering you the chance to provide a year's worth of free labor in exchange for valuable learning and connections, and you have another firm that's cynically offering you the chance to provide More than $50,000 in exchange for valuable learning and connections. It's at least not obvious to me that the zero-salary option makes less sense than the negative-salary option. Now the real-world issue here is that financing options are relevant.

If you actually have $50,000 in the bank, then I think it's a no-brainer. You set $25,000 aside as savings to make a down payment on a house someday, and you work for free for a year spending down your $25,000. If at the end of the year you get a paying gig, good for you! If you don't, then you go into some other line of work. But who has $50,000 in the bank? The government will help make sure you can get a loan if you spend it on graduate school but not if the issue is that you just need to eat. So it's not just that young people from privileged backgrounds have access to potentially more attractive career opportunities—they have access to them on a more attractive financial basis. If college were free (so people exited with no debt) and everyone got a $50,000 graduation present for finishing, my bet is that we'd see more internships and fewer graduate schools.

Responses to FT Article: Death of Travel Guidebooks

The Financial Times article about new technology and the future of printed travel guidebooks was picked up on a Google Group called Travel Guide Writers, and brought up an excellent discussion on travel apps. All you budding travel writers should join this group to keep track on what's happening and new in the fast changing world of travel writing.

Here's the original post from the app vendor at Sutro:

Some thoughts and questions from the "other side" of this conversation

- I'm an App vendor that focuses on publishers with trusted content.

Promotion - There are 225,000+ applications in the Apple store, with the travel section growing by the day. We believe that creating the application is only a small part of the problem. Unless people purchase your application then you make no money regardless of how cheap it was to create it in the first place.

For people to find your application you either rely on luck, or you have to promote through other means such as web site or blog traffic. This is where the big name brands have the leg up - they built their brands when travel guides were physically printed books because they were big enough to bear the printing and distribution costs, and now they can leverage their brands to enable people to find their applications. Think about a LP book - how many people really recognize the author's name compared to LP's name? Yes, it is the author's (and editor's) work that created the book, but the brand is, in this example, LP.

Volume - Our applications are often in the top 12 "what's hot" list of the travel section on iTunes but the volume isn't where we want it to be. When we're the #1 travel application for a few days and still want to see increased volume, what does that say about the volumes of all of the other applications? This is a direct impact of the promotion piece above (we still need to help our publishing partners with their promotional pieces), but also raises the question of whether the market is yet ready for this new approach to delivering travel content. See below on this question.

Price - There is definitely a race to the bottom for application prices. Even LP has reduced their prices (across the board?) to less that $10; many travel applications are even lower than $5. We have heard that a $0.99 application is the sweet spot for Apple's developer iAd advertising as the conversion rate for a higher cost application will be too low to warrant the cost of the "pay per click" model that iAd offers - although we're not sure if that is general across all application types or specific to value add products such as mobile travel guides. A low volume at a low price is not a lot of money,whatever the revenue share split.

Shelf life- Newer applications covering the same destination are preferred by buying customers to older applications. This is human nature (magazines are always published a month ahead of time) but is also encouraged by Apple's store that by default lists applications newest to oldest. A typical print guide book has a 24 month edition
life before being revamped for the subsequent print run. We find a one or two monthly refresh of our applications helps to keep them higher in the various lists. But refreshes have to be meaningful; you can't just republish the same application with a new version number as existing users will start to moan in the reviews, and a bad review is hard to overcome. In our model we roll out new platform features every few months to have a meaningful refresh. But in a "roll your own" model" this could be hard to sustain, especially if a large number of titles are published to have enough volume to put food on the table and the only real means of improving the product is to add more
content.

Questions that we have at the moment are:

Is the market ready? Yes, there is a great deal of buzz around mobile applications (it's why we're playing in his arena) but is the buzz substantiated by people actually buying content? Big brands are able to dump their books into a mobile application but is that just their brand momentum carrying over into the mobile space for now? Given the race to the price bottom how is the value of the content promoted so that it bucks the pricing trend?

Travel books are likely to disappear, or have significantly less volume - see the figures that started this thread. What replaces them? Clearly the smartphone is the new "in" device with projected 10 times growth in the next three years. So travel guide users are likely to have a smartphone, but how is travel content delivered to this platform in a way to make it appealing enough to make people pay money for the content?

Will we have to wait out a period where users have tried the free Wikipedia content before realizing that there is a reason to pay for content from an author that knows his/her stuff?

Is there a minimum size of publisher that can survive? Is the "anyone
can build a cheap application" belief even true? Yes anyone *can*
build a cheap application, but can they earn a living from it? Is the
traditional "big organization with lots of dependent authors" model
still true today and will be tomorrow? I wonder if some of the bigger
publishers are working towards maintaining this status quo - I would
if I was them. But does the technology enable newer author led
consortiums to build their "big enough organizations" to publish
electronically, and do authors want to even do this?

Are mobile applications just the "loss leader" to bring eyeballs and
wallets to other products? Is this true now, and if so will this be
true forever?

Even if money cannot currently be made from mobile applications, do
authors still need to produce applications to stake a claim?

If we could wave a magic wand and have the perfect mobile application
distribution solution tomorrow, what would it look it?

We have our own hypotheses and answers to these questions that we're
actively testing out and discussing with our publishers. But I'm very
interested in hearing the "author's viewpoint" to these questions,
whether publicly here on this forum or via a private message.

Regards,
Colin

Death of the Printed Travel Guidebook?

Financial Times recently looked at new technology and how new gizmos may eventually replace printed travel guidebooks. While it seems inevitable, I'd say printed guidebooks will remain dominant for the near future until the technology is sorted out and ebook readers and IPad clones bring down the cost significantly.

A few notable comments here, but do read the entire article and be prepared for some technology headaches.

“The publishing world has been talking for years about how we are going to follow the music industry down the pan,” says Mark Ellingham, founder of the Rough Guides series, which has sold more than 30m books worldwide.“I don’t think that is going to happen tremendously quickly for publishing in general, but travel guidebooks are absolutely the front line. In travel it makes much more sense to have digital rather than traditional paper books.”

And the latest news from the front line is not good. In fact, over the past two and a half years, guidebook sales in Britain have fallen off a cliff. Sales for 2009 were down 18 per cent on 2007, and if the second half of this year follows the first, 2010 will be down 27 per cent on 2007, according to data from Nielsen BookScan. If the current rate of decline continues, the final guidebook will be sold in less than seven years’ time.

Lonely Planet’s Australia guide sold 20,015 copies in 2008, and just 13,530 in 2009 – a drop of a third (again, the figures are from Nielsen BookScan, covering sales from British retailers). The Rough Guide to France, which sold 11,943 in 2008, fell 45 per cent to 6,561 the following year. Worse is that these are considered bestsellers.

Of course, the fortunes of individual titles fluctuate with the launch of new editions and the fashionability of destinations, but average sales across the whole range paint an equally bleak picture. Last year, the average UK sale of each title from the leading five publishers was around 1,500 copies.

The reasons behind this sales collapse are all too apparent – a combination of new technology and recession. Fewer people are travelling so buy fewer guidebooks, while those that do still go away are more likely to download free information online rather than spending money on a book.

Sales figures may be dire, the challenges mounting, but this summer there’s a buzz in the world of travel publishing, a sense of being on the verge of a totally new era. The internet allowed people to research their trips themselves before setting out, but smartphone apps and iPads travel with them. Suddenly the guidebook publishers, who for years seemed to be looking on from the sidelines, unsure of how to make websites work for them, have found themselves with a medium that makes sense.

“I could see that if you got in early and created the most compelling products then it could be fantastically lucrative as well,” says Douglas Schatz, who last year gave up his job as boss of Stanfords, the venerable London travel book shop, to become Lonely Planet’s managing director for Europe, Middle East and Asia.

Remember those guidebook sales figures? The average title selling just 1,500 copies a year? Compare that with the fact that during the volcanic ash crisis, 4.2m Lonely Planet apps covering 13 destinations were downloaded within four days. Admittedly they were being given away as a free promotion to help stranded passengers, but it hints at the potential.

Selling apps online also lets publishers cut out conventional retailers, who have been squeezing margins aggressively and often dictated at what price a book will be sold.

Of course, over the past couple of years have seen many travel-related apps, some from airlines, hotels and others in the travel industry; others as extensions of travel websites, and lots of them free. But this summer publishers are piling into the app market, hoping to persuade customers that it’s worth paying for an app that comes with the guidebook brand’s trusted tone and voice.

Last month Ellingham, who sold Rough Guides in 2008, launched Cool Places, a series of 30 slick apps to UK destinations, including St Ives, Brighton and Whitby. In June, Footprint Travel Guides released its first apps, with 50 being rolled out by the end of this month. Rough Guides’ new apps debut later this year, and last week Lonely Planet launched its new Compass app – the first augmented reality app from a mainstream guidebook publisher. Their jostling for position is given extra impetus by the assumption that the market will explode as mobile roaming charges fall.

So will the printed guidebook disappear altogether? One scenario sees print becoming the preserve of photo-led “inspiration” books, for armchair reading before you go away. But even that market could be squeezed by the iPad. Lonely Planet, for example, recently released 1,000 Ultimate Experiences, an innovative iPad book for pre-travel inspiration that mixes photos, text and video.

Another theory is that books will become niche products covering special interests or remote, developing destinations without mobile coverage or the visitor numbers to merit an app. Bradt – known for its guides to almost comically uncommercial destinations, including North Korea and Iraq – actually saw sales rise by 2.25 per cent in 2009. And one of the few real success stories of recent years has been Punk Publishing, which produces the Cool Camping and Wild Swimming series, and saw sales double in the last four years.

Guest Editorial

And here's an editorial from a former Moon travel guidebook writer:

OUTSOURCING MOON
by X-Moon, Delhi bureau

Bill Newlin has announced that he is outsourcing all guidebook writing to a company based in Bangalore, India. Further questioning reveals that this company is in fact a plantation where monkeys have been trained to climb trees and twist off coconuts. With the recent rapid decline in world coconut production, unemployed monkeys have been ingeniously retrained by the Bangalore plantation owners to modify content for Moon guidebooks.

There are estimated to be 2,000 monkeys typing away on 2,000 typewriters.

They are divided into huts by continent: North America, Latin America, Asia and Europe.

"The maps have proved problematic," said Bill, "but otherwise, the gibberish is adequate for most travel needs. It's an ideal match for Moon because we pay them peanuts." Bill also mentioned that he is pleased that the monkeys will not dispute the format of the material. They apparently do not go berserk if print-size is drastically reduced, or the work is printed on paper so thin you can see through it. They tend to go berserk, however, if the peanut supply dwindles.

Bill spoke further: "The disconnect we were having with the human writers was causing a lot of aggravation in our editorial offices. What the chimps do is take older editions and change one word on each page, which then passes for the new edition. That's all we need really. Most of our readers don't give a fig about content anyway. What they need is the security blanket of some sort of guidebook to hold. And that's what we give them."

Next on the horizon, Newlin is thinking seriously about outsourcing cover designs to elephants in northern Thailand. "I have heard that they are quite capable artists and very adept with their trunks. Of course, the cost of feeding them is far higher than the monkeys, but still well below human designer rates, even those of starving artists in garrets." Newlin is currently looking into cheaper sources of feed for the mammoth designers, in order to cut costs.

Hard Times at Lonely Planet (slight return)

Another report about the recent layoffs at Lonely Planet.

Melbourne-based guidebook behemoth Lonely Planet will announce the sacking of 50 staff tonight -- around 10% of its global workforce -- as the global economic downturn continues to gut the tourism industry and guidebook sales.

Staff at Lonely Planet’s Footscray office were informed of the layoffs this morning with management calling a meeting this afternoon to discuss the changes and tap shoulders. A formal announcement is due at 9pm tonight to tie in with owner BBC Worldwide's London-centric media strategy.

A spokesman for Acting CEO Stephen Palmer confirmed the cuts to Crikey this morning and said they will impact all areas of the business. Affected staff were still in the process of being informed that they were out of a job when Crikey called.

In an emailed statement, Palmer said the situation was a "difficult" one but that the company had no choice in the context of the economic downturn.

"I recognise that this is a terribly difficult time, particularly for those whose jobs will be made redundant. I would like to reiterate that I would not have taken this action if there was any way I could have avoided it."

Palmer said the cuts were spread across the Lonely Planet's US, UK and Australian offices and did not comment on the specific divisions affected. But sources have told Crikey that the entire online content production division has been dismantled with extra cuts to be made in support roles. The book production section is said to be immune while images staff and commissioning editors appear to have also escaped the axe.

The cuts were foreshadowed on Monday when BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons gave a speech in Cardiff indicating BBC Worldwide’s operations will be scaled back to focus on its core commercial business of repackaging the Beeb's archive for DVD sales. UK MPs have savaged the company for the $250 million Lonely Planet purchase, claiming it has no links to its core business. The BBC is also under pressure from the UK government to use its licence fees to bail out Channel 4. BBC Worldwide made 112 million pounds last year.

Louise Connor of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance said she wasn't surprised at the decision in the context of the global tourism meltdown.

"It’s sad to see decisions made in England affecting so many jobs in Australia," she added.

Lonely Planet staff tell of a sense of foreboding that has gripped the Footscray office over the past few months. Palmer has regularly used company-wide meetings to give frank assessments about revenue problems and website cost blowouts. Sources say that once the new website was completed, the heat was on middle management to justify ongoing staffing levels.

In October 2007, original owners Tony and Maureen Wheeler sold Lonely Planet to BBC Worldwide for around $250 million. The Wheelers retained a 25% stake and are still swimming in the proceeds of the deal, reportedly mulling plans to spend $12 million on a lavish production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

The latest lay-offs mirror a move taken by the Wheelers in 2004 when 40 staff were sacked and those remaining told to forgo a 3% pay rise in the midst of the SARS outbreak.

It is not known whether the 120 staff at Lonely Planet’s Oakland and London offices have been informed of the sackings

Crikey

Hard Times at Lonely Planet

The worldwide economic collapse has hit almost everyone, including publishers of travel guidebooks, as shown by this recent announcement from Lonely Planet. Actually, I'm surprised that they only cut 10% of their labor force, but I do expect more retreachment as the year progresses. I've also heard that Avalon Travel Publishing and Moon Publications are in deep shit, cancelling several of their planned Europe guides, and getting lousy reviews at Amazon on some of their replacement guides to SE Asia. They saved some money with lower royalty rates, but cut off their noses.

Lonely Planet tells staff to pack their bags
Chris Zappone
February 25, 2009 - 2:53PM

Travel guide book publisher Lonely Planet has cut up to 50 positions as the demand for guidebooks shrivels in the face of global financial crisis.The cuts will affect staff in Australia, the US and Britain where most of the company's sales and offices are.

Before the cuts the company said it had 500 people on its payroll.The retrenchments are "directly related to the economic downturn because we're a global company,'' spokesman Adam Bennett said."It represents the decline of the guidebook market in tough times.'' Mr Bennett said the US and Britain, both of which are struggling with recession, represented a combined total of 60% of guide book sales.Lonely Planet, which is 75%-owned by the BBC's commercial enterprise BBC Worldwide, said it was consulting with employees, some of whom were not having their contracts renewed, while others were having their positions eliminated.

Acting chief exectuve Stephen Palmer said in a statement that the global market for travel was not expected to pick up soon."Even the most optimistic forecasts do not predict any sustained recovery until 2010 at the earliest, and even then it is likely to be slow and patchy,'' Mr Palmer said."The US, UK and Europe are all in recession, and these territories account for over 80% of our business.''Mr Palmer cited a UN World Travel Organisation forecast for total outbound travel to dip 2% this year.

But he predicted Lonely Planet's core markets would erode further with a 10% fall in the US, 5% in Britain and 2% in Australia."It has become clear that this economic situation is unprecedented, it will not just be a blip and we need to adjust our costs so we can manage through these tough times.''czappone@fairfax.com.au

On Lonely Planet and the BBC

Another interesting argument against the merger of Lonely Planet and the BBC, with some even more interesting comments on the issue.

I've blogged quite recently about the new Lonely Planet travel magazine which I think is an unfair competitor to Wanderlust (an excellent independent travel magazine which I write for quite a bit).

Why is this unfair? Because LP is now majority-owned by the BBC.

Following on from the new LP Travel magazine (which is written almost 100% by BBC writers and presenters) here's another example of how that playing field just isn't level anymore. Any brand would kill for a tie-up with the BBC on the BBC's homepage. The value in brand terms is huge. And this will translate to more hits for the LP website, more ad revenue and more book sales for LP.

You can't blame LP for wanting to make the most of the fact that its now owned by the BBC (or to be more accurate the commerical arm of the Beeb - BBC Worldwide) and with the clout of one of the world's most influential and wealthy media brands behind it the future for LP looks rosy.

I hadn't thought too much when the deal was announced about the impact on the LP brand of being owned by the BBC, but selling out to a big corporation says heaps about a brand and its future. I can see that Tony Wheeler (LP's founder) quite possibly felt that selling to a cultural corporation like the BBC rather than to a full-on multi-national commercial publisher was a good compromise... and smart too - moving the brand on from being a traditional paper and print publisher to a forward looking media organisation.

But I think it's all wrong. He'd have been better off selling to a fully commercial publisher (or media organisation) rather than one that's subsidised by the UK taxpayer. (Non UK readers - every tax payer in the UK pays an annual TV licence that costs around £130). Whilst some would argue that BBC Worldwide is a separate entity, the reality is that you can't work out where the taxpayer funded elements of the BBC start and where the commerically funded ones take over. And the benefits of association with the BBC brand are - whilst difficult to measure - most probably huge

I'm worried that LP is going to turn into some awful travel publishing megabrand that's everywhere. (take Jamie bleedin Oliver - lovely guy but do we REALLY need a Jamie magazine? For heaven's sake!) Watch this space for LP branded TV shows, LP branded clothes and gear, LP branded areas in tour operators and a plethora or LP branded websites, blog hosting services ane more... not to mention LP guide content being sold to third party tour operators, airlines and so on to use as destination content on their websites

Jeremy Head's Travel Blather