30 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ JULY 29, 2019

I

n the decades following the storied beginnings of

Lonely Planet and Moon, when their traveling founders

passed around mimeographs of their typed-up notes

and crudely drawn maps, guidebooks largely stuck to

the same format—maximum, densely packed informa-

tion punctuated by compressed images.

Today, comprehensive guides—those that cover an entire

country or cluster of countries—typically remain text-heavy

affairs. Meanwhile, travel upstarts seek to attract readers with

a focused mix of substance and style, and longtime guidebook

publishers are putting more of an emphasis on visuals in series

outside of their core offerings.

“It’s really important to have something that’s practical and

useful,” says Anna Chittenden, who writes the Lost Guides

series. “But practical doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful.”

Chittenden moved from London to Singapore in 2014 and

launched her series the following year with Lost Guides: Bali. A

Singapore book followed in 2017; both titles were distributed

in the U.K. and Asia. In October, Cardinal Publishers Group

is bringing Lost Guides to the U.S. with the latest editions of

the Bali and Singapore books, as well as the new Lost Guides:

Tokyo & Beyond, which is publishing ahead of an expected uptick

in tourism thanks to the 2020 Olympics.

Part of the impetus behind the series, Chittenden says, is that

she didn’t feel any existing guidebooks spoke to her “generation

of traveler”—people who, as she writes in Tokyo & Beyond, are

at the point in their lives when they “don’t require over-the-top

extravagance but can stretch beyond the budget of a back-

packer.” For each guidebook, she compiles 120–150 of her

favorite things to see and do in each destination, with at least

one photo per entry, as well as information including addresses,

Instagram handles, hours, and public transportation informa-

tion. “If you’re in Bali without internet,” she says, “you’re still

okay with just this book.”

Including those details makes the guides more than just

“beautiful to look at,” Chittenden says, but she’s unequivocal

about the importance of visual appeal. “Posting books on social

media is the new word-of-mouth,” she says. “The covers have

to be really appealing to encourage people to post them.”

Show and Tell

London’s Amber Books, best known for history and military

titles, is venturing into travel publishing with its new Visual

Explorer Guide series. Sterling will distribute the books in the

U.S., beginning in August with guides to Iceland, Italy, and

Paris.

The guides emphasize visual representation and cultural

context over trip-planning nitty-gritty. “Iceland is as much

SEE THE

WORLD

Guidebook publishers strike a

balance between image and

information

BY JASMINA KELEMEN

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The second edition of Lost Guides: Bali & Islands (l.), and Peru (r.), part of

Lonely Planet’s Best Of series, coming to the U.S. in August.

continued on p. 33