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Robert Reid: A Guidebook Writer in the Digital Age

03.14.08 | 10:47 AM ET

During the past five years, Robert Reid has researched and written a dozen Lonely Planet books totaling almost a million copies sold, and he has helped update a half-dozen more books. In 2006 he passed up a chance to work on Lonely Planet’s Vietnam title and instead created his own free online guide to Vietnam, Reid On Travel. After we recently wrote about the death of a classic guidebook, I contacted Robert for a chat about changes sweeping the guidebook publishing industry. I tracked him down in Burma, where he was updating Lonely Planet’s controversial guide to that country.

World Hum: How do you think the Internet, and online travel guides in particular, have affected the guidebook publishing industry? Do the traditional publishers see it as a dangerous competitor, an opportunity to reach more readers using a new medium, or maybe a bit of both?

Robert Reid: I used to think the most important thing we guidebook authors did for travelers was hotel reviews. People like to have some sense of security that the $5 or $300 place they’re staying in won’t be a brothel or rat-infested dump. But the Internet has already completely changed this. Previously if I had a new budget hotel in a town center, or a mid-ranger with pool, travelers would have to wait nine or 12 months from the time I “discovered” it until it appeared in a guide. Now Internet booking sites often get them immediately. When I went to China a couple years ago, I stayed at a brand-new hostel in Beijing that the Trans-Siberian author had just found, but that hadn’t yet appeared in the guide. It was already full! I was amazed at how nearly all the people there had found it online, and were booking their full China trip’s accommodations online.

At a Lonely Planet workshop a couple years ago, I asked a high-up at LP who they saw as their biggest competitor, and they immediately answered “Google.” I was impressed. So publishers like LP definitely see the Internet as a growing competitor, and have for a while. When the BBC bought LP a couple months ago, one of the key things they cited for future development was online content.

In the About section of Reid On Travel, you mention a couple of advantages of the independent Web-based guidebook: turn-around time, and the ability to be more frank about the places you visit. Do you see any downsides to the Web format, areas where the traditional guidebook still has the edge?

I still think many, many travelers like holding a book in their hands. One of the things I really want to have on my site is print-friendly PDFs with alternate covers and directions on how to bind your own customized version of the guide. That would be fun to have.

I’m also talking with a Vietnamese publisher about making a mini version of “alternate Vietnam” for Southeast Asia distribution. That would be fun, too.

Another thing is that many sites with travel content online don’t have maps. And maps are HUGE. I sometimes think seasoned travelers need only a map, with barebones details of a few places to stay, and barebones details of what to see and where to eat. If they trust the author—and that’s a big if, of course—not as much needs to be said as some people think. This, again, is for seasoned travelers only.

The only other thing I fear regarding online guidebooks is if they follow the “I stayed here and it was great” TripAdvisor or Amazon.com model. Those are useful, no doubt, but they’re only based on isolated experiences. If publishers turn things over at some point to reader-generated content, you won’t have the authoritative overviews that guidebook writers can offer, and it’ll end up with deeper beaten tracks, with more travelers doing the same thing.

What about the idea of diminishing regional expertise —the notion that publishers are increasingly turning to writers unfamiliar with the regions they’re being asked to cover? Do you agree that’s a trend in published guidebooks? And is that something the Web can improve on?

When I was at LP I used to have arguments with some editors about the issue of regional expertise.

Of course, if you have an author who’s been to Slovenia 11 times, lived there a year, and worked on the guidebook three times in a row, that is going to be better than a new young hot-looking author that would “love going to Eastern Europe at some point.” That’s clear.

What’s less clear is how “local insiders” can be vastly overvalued. For example, me. A few years ago LP asked me to update the hotels section for the New York City guide; as I’ve lived their eight or nine years now, I was seen as a good candidate. But actually I had never visited a New York hotel before. Sure I knew the difference between the Lower East Side and the Upper East Side, but I couldn’t tell you much about the Mercer or the Mark. Actually a far better qualified author to give judgment on hotel perspectives and how they’ve changed is the author who has done it before—an author living in Cuba of all places. (In this case, she didn’t want the book back, so—to be honest—I was a pretty good choice for them. And if I update the hotels again, I’ll feel about as well-qualified as anyone in the author pool…)

Another example is, say, if a publisher wants to do “Trekking in Nepal,” and they have two author choices: one who spent two years in the Peace Corps in a remote Nepal town, and another veteran author who wrote extensively about Patagonia in South America. In my opinion the Patagonia writer very well may be the better choice, even if that person hasn’t been to Nepal. Some don’t see it that way.

It’s possible to “build expertise” if publishers are willing to stick with an author on a few successive editions. A few years ago I updated Bulgaria for Eastern Europe having never been. Last year I updated it a second time, then was able to write an article on a student bar scene for the New York Times. I feel confident I’m as well-prepared to work on that guide as about anyone out there. And only because I was asked back. A second time updating a place is so much easier than the first.

I’m sure all the publishers now are wondering about how to hand off guidebooks to stringers, local experts who don’t have to pay high costs to fly across the world. They could update sections—Time Out-style—and have more frequent updates. That’s easier for urban areas, where restaurants and bars and hotels frequently change. In the next LP Russia guide, a great Muscovite writer has been added to the multi-author team—that should be good. But he’s not doing Moscow, but parts of Russia farther east. And I think that’s a perfect plan. Stringers may work for a “Cool Berlin Guide” online, but will have more trouble getting a traveler-oriented perspective of Xian, China or Nicaragua. Sometimes it’s harder to write about home.

But I do want to say David Stanley is right, it’s sad and reckless if an old author who did good work on several editions is cut for a new author. In my opinion, in-house editors don’t completely understand what goes into researching these guides—I was an editor for years, and only figured it out once I started writing full time. The best experience for writing a guidebook to X is not living in X but actually having written a guidebook to X. Sometimes publishers forget that a bit.

I don’t know if you packed your crystal ball for your trip to Burma, but any predictions for how all this will play out? Are paper guidebooks an endangered species? Will Google create an online guidebook empire, crushing paper books and indie Web sites alike?

Sometimes I think we’re living a doomed profession, and that we’ll look back on the wacky wild period from the 1970s to the 2000s when scores of notebook-toting travelers went and sought out the mysteries of places that are no longer mysterious. People will look back on the era like reading Graham Greene books about far-flung places at wilder times.

Will guidebooks in book form die? Probably so. But to be honest, I think there will always be room for the perspective of the “guidebook author,” at least online. Once hand-held devices get even more sophisticated, so that maps and reviews are more easily referred to—or we old folks die out and the younger generations who are not so soft on books take over—things will probably go online completely. But I sometimes think people like holding those books. So far, though, the TripAdvisor-type sites are excellent resources, but don’t account for perspective. One person goes to Y hotel and says “it’s super!” But they don’t realize A, B, C are similar and $40 less. Who goes to all 15 museums in Bucharest but a guidebook author? So only they can tell you that something like the Romanian National Museum of the Peasant is about the best museum in the world.

Thanks, Robert.

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Photos Courtesy:  REUTERS  |  iStockPhoto  |  flickr  

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