James O’Reilly and Larry Habegger launched Travelers’ Tales 10 years ago in San Francisco, California. “At the outset the idea was pretty down-to-earth: doing something useful that took advantage of our travel experience, that would also free us from the vagaries of freelancing and working in bars and at odd jobs,” says O’Reilly. “If you’d plied us with drink back then, we might have also said we wanted to produce books that brought people a renewed sense of love for the world.” They have done just that. Travelers’ Tales has consistently published anthologies and full-length narratives that emphasize the spiritual side of travel. Both categories have garnered loyal followings. It’s quite an achievement, particularly in the ever-challenging business of travel publishing. On the eve of the release of Travelers’ Tales latest anthology, The Best Travelers’ Tales 2004, I traded e-mails with O’Reilly, the publisher of Travelers’ Tales, about the past and future of the company, travel writing and travel in general.

World Hum: Congratulations on your 10th anniversary. What spurred you to start Travelers’ Tales all those years ago?

Thank you. We thought something was missing in the guidebook realm, and we sought to plug that gap. Specifically, we noticed that when we read a good story about a place or an activity, it helped enormously with decision-making—do I want to go there in the first place, what will I choose to do when the guidebooks make everything seem appealing. In short, how do I narrow down options and make choices? Good information is of course terribly important, but anecdotes are what help you retain and make sense of that information, integrate it with your own experience. In this sense we came to think of Travelers’ Tales as publishing “experiential” guidebooks. Stories are the sticky stuff that help us navigate the inner realm where hope, desire, and information converge.

What did you hope to accomplish?

We wanted to inspire people through the experiences of others to get out and explore—and thereby develop not just their own storytelling but themselves period. Our not-so-secret intent all along has been to promote the idea of travel as pilgrimage, as a mirror of the inner voyage we all begin at birth.

At the beginning we thought we’d have a substantial series if we published three books. That of course was when we knew nothing. Now at least we have an understanding of the scale of not only our ignorance but the challenge of operating a successful publishing company, especially in such a tiny niche as travel literature. On bad days, owning a hot dog stand is pretty appealing. On the good days, what we’re doing, or should I say drinking, at Travelers’ Tales is a form of intellectual ambrosia.

So you started with Travelers’ Tales Thailand. How was it received? It won a gold medal for best book in the Lowell Thomas Awards. To say that we were jubilant is an understatement. We put heart and soul into that book, countless hours of reading and thinking and discussing how we could possibly digest an entire country and interpret it for the traveler in a few dozen stories. 

What a great start. How many books have you published?

Seventy five and counting. 

Is there a book or two that you’ve published that you’re particularly proud of? Our first four destination titles were amazing challenges, and to this day I am still pleased with what we produced: after Thailand came Mexico, India, and France, and each one presented us with entirely new problems to solve with the vast range of material, and the responsibility we felt to travelers and readers and citizens of those countries was keen.  We’ve been delighted that each venture into a new area has met with critical acclaim and awards, just as Thailand had: “A Woman’s World” won a Lowell Thomas Award, and so did “Food”, and our first venture into “spiritual travel,” “The Road Within”, won an Independent Publisher’s Award for best book, as did our first humor collection, “There’s No Toilet Paper on the Road Less Traveled”. Our first single author narrative, Laurie Gough’s “Kite Strings of the Southern Cross”, was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Award in England.  To add to that already incontinent list of favorites I must add three more. It was a special pleasure to start our Classics series by re-introducing Richard Halliburton’s “Royal Road to Romance”, a bestseller in its time and deservedly so for its timeless clarion call to abandon the ordinary life and live your dreams. Then we had the opportunity to publish the immortal Jan Morris’s very first book “Coast to Coast”, a fascinating account of roaming the United States in the 1950s. This was a real honor, as everyone at Travelers’ Tales is a big fan of hers. She is truly the “grande dame” of travel writing, but more than that, she represents to any writer what it means to be a good and fair witness during your travels.  Finally, there’s Brad Newsham’s poignant and big-hearted story, “Take Me With You”, in which he sought to repay the kindness of strangers he’d enjoyed after many years of traveling. This book has everything in it we care about, everything we hope people take from our books and apply to their own travels and their interactions with strangers in strange lands. The book inspired selfless acts from countless readers, and spawned Backpack Nation, an organization that continues the spirit of kindness and generosity that Brad’s tale established. So that book was really a big deal for us, philosophically speaking, and emotionally.

As part of your anniversary year, you’re launching a Best Of series. What else are you planning to celebrate the milestone?

This fall we will be publishing “A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk about Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration”. It’s a wonderful, revealing, and useful collection of interviews by Michael Shapiro with terrific writers including Bill Bryson, Paul Theroux, Jonathan Raban, Frances Mayes, Isabel Allende, Pico Iyer, Tim Cahill, and many other luminaries. I say “useful” because I think that even experienced writers will enjoy and be inspired by what these folks have to say about themselves and the world.

What do you think about the current state of travel writing and publishing?

There is marvelous material being published every month, in books, magazines, on the web. The richness is astounding. Publishing itself is tough, as it always has been, and in an ongoing great state of change. People are reading less, and “watching” more, and yet the power of a good story remains unchanged. I sincerely hope that even if reading continues its decline, listening to books on iPods and MP3 players will increase so that young people especially won’t be deprived of the happiness and learning that awaits them in the mind of another human being as represented in storytelling. 

Are you as hopeful about the state of travel itself?

The world is the world, bigger than any technology we create. The same goes for the human species—it is incalculably rich and layered, and travel will always remain the best way to mine that mother lode of all experience. Travel is also the most underappreciated way to achieve what most of us want in life—a sense of magic, possibility, enlightenment, motion, romance, not to mention appreciation of home, hearth, family and friends.

Now for the college essay question: What do you hope to accomplish with Travelers’ Tales in the next 10 years?

We’re looking forward to sponsoring writing seminars on the art of travel, and travel writing as a form of vocation and service to humanity. We are already involved in basic groundwork on this. Additionally, we’ve been recording anecdotal segments for satellite radio, and hope to be doing more of this as well as to be creating different forms of travel and world culture programming as satellite radio becomes the standard, as we think it will over time.  Creating a stable and creative business is a way bigger challenge than we would have imagined 10 years ago, especially one as fraught with the ruins of good ideas as publishing. So if 10 more years out, Travelers’ Tales is still producing interesting work that continues to express a love of the world and inspire people to explore, I for one will be a happy guy. That’s not too much to ask is it? 

Not at all. Thanks.

Michael Yessis is the co-editor of World Hum. Portrait and Everest photos courtesy of Travelers’ Tales.