20 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ JULY 29, 2019
Travel Books
Richards says. “They want to trek and see these
beautiful phenomena, so an ice hotel didn’t fit
quite right for our readers today.”
National Geographic has a deep bookshelf of
inspirational titles, including 2015’s Destinations
of a Lifetime, which has sold 95,000 print copies,
per BookScan. October brings Epic Journeys, an
assemblage of more than 200 adventures—dog
sledding in Norway, tubing the glowworm caves
of New Zealand—with plentiful photos and
trip-planning info.
At Rough Guides, the fourth edition of Make
the Most of Your Time on Earth (Oct.) amps up the
photography, streamlines the font, and adds 150
experiential recommendations. Suggestions
include walking in Odysseus’s footsteps on the
Adriatic island of Mljet, hippo spotting off the
coast of Guinea-Bissau, or strolling among
David Hockney landscapes along Britain’s
Yorkshire Wolds Way.
Also out in October is Rough Guides’ 100 Best
Places on Earth, originally conceived as a one-off
companion to Make the Most of Your Time on Earth.
But given the popularity of books presenting an
entire world of choice, says managing editor
Rachel Lawrence, it will instead be updated
annually to include emerging destinations.
Lonely Planet opts for a similarly sweeping
approach with Dark Skies by Valerie Stimac
(Sept.). The publisher first strayed from its long-
time guidebook formula with 2004’s The Travel
Book, a photo-heavy overview of every country
in the world that’s sold more than a million
copies worldwide over three editions, says asso-
ciate publisher Robin Barton. “One of the best
reasons for publishing compendiums of travel
experiences is that they will hopefully inspire
readers to plan a trip somewhere new,” Barton
says.“Above all, we want to get people excited
about travel, which we firmly believe is a force
for good.”
Dark Skies, with the stated goal of directing the reader’s
attention heavenward, includes all the basics for amateur sky
watchers: where to go for the clearest nighttime skies, schedules
for eclipses, and the best viewing destinations for meteor
showers and auroras.Blazing Trails
Lonely Planet is also adding to its Epic series, which launched
in 2016. August’s Epic Runs of the World and Epic Bike Rides of
the Americas, Barton says, reflect the growing popularity of vaca-
tion planning around bucket-list races or trail runs. Each ride
or run is accompanied by what the book calls a “toolkit” ofpractical information—how to get there, where
to stay, and when to go. Yet the books, with
their fanciful illustrated covers and pages of
location photography, also fit neatly with other
inspirational titles. “You may have no intention
of doing some of the gnarlier rides, runs, or
hikes,” Barton says, “but you’ll enjoy reading
about them and perhaps dream of trying some-
thing similar one day.”
Veteran Australian outdoorsman Cam
Honan, whom Backpacker magazine once called
“the most travelled hiker on earth,” details
multiday expeditions and day treks through
America’s wild lands in Wanderlust USA
(Gestalten, Nov.). Roaming from Maine to
Hawaii, Honan selects hikes suitable for a
range of skill levels and shares tips honed while
logging more than 60,000 miles trekked over
the last 30 years.
Gestalten also has updated and acquired
global distribution rights for Remote Places to
Stay by Debbie Pappyn and David De
Vleeschauwer (Nov.), first published in 2014.
Each of the 22 accommodations, whether a
Himalayan retreat or a Southern Italian con-
vent, enjoys a privileged setting in an invit-
ingly photographed landscape where serenity
is billed as the true luxury.
A similar attitude fuels Slow Travel by Penny
Watson (Hardie Grant, Nov.), a manifesto for
the unplugged journey. “Our connectedness to
the digital world, as illuminating and ground-
breaking as it is, also underscores a driving need
for more downtime,” Watson writes, and “more
time to connect to something other than our
device.”
Melissa Kayser, publisher at Hardie Grant,
says the book’s anecdotal, experiential
approach—suggestions include rock climbing
in Oman, volcano trekking in Bali, and ice
swimming in Denmark—is in keeping with the needs of the
modern traveler. “People buy travel books for different reasons
than they used to,” she says. In explaining how she envisions
readers using the information in Slow Travel, she could be
speaking for the publishers of other titles designed to inspire.
“We’ve very much moved on from your standard travel
guide,” Kayser says. “We’ve created a beautiful object that
includes a range of destinations. That’s the jumping-off point,
and if you’re interested in visiting one of these destinations, you
can go on from there.” ■Jasmina Kelemen divides her time between Houston and Caracas and has
reported from Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.