Most people don’t know about my “other” publishing company, which I started in 1994 with my brother James and his writing partner Larry Habegger, Travelers Tales. Our first book, Travelers Tales Thailand, won the Society of American Travel Writers prestigious Lowell Thomas Award for best travel book of the year. We’ve won it numerous times since. James just sent me a note to let me know we’ve done it again:
We won both Gold and Bronze for best travel book this year.
Gold: 100 Places Every Woman Should Go
Bronze: Best Travel Writing 2007
The Travelers Tales series is based on the insight that the best way to prepare for a trip isn’t to pore over laundry lists of places to go and things to see, but to read stories by people who’ve been there. The books are anthologies of true travelers tales about places, or about themes (womens’ travel, food, adventure, spirituality.)
A couple of my own travel stories have appeared in Travelers Tales (and are available online): Walking the Kerry Way, and Illumined in St. Chappelle.
To make this story remotely relevant to the normal themes of this blog, let me point out how much of traditional publishing is in fact based on “user generated content.” Publishers don’t create content so much as they search out, curate, and promote it. Travelers Tales has been in the business for years of assembling the best stories on a place or a topic, searching through both published and unpublished material. Bringing Web 2.0 to publishing means finding new methods of curation, but it doesn’t mean that curation and editorial selection go away as key competencies.