The Market For Travel Books

Young woman reads a Lonely Planet guide in Kandy train station, Sri Lanka.

photograph: getty images

A reminder of the reasons for travel writing‘s staying power:

Why travel guidebooks are not going anywhere

Despite predictions that the internet would kill them

They declared that it was dead—or, if it wasn’t dead yet, it soon would be. The cause of the malady was viral: first blogs, then influencers on Instagram and TikTok. Continue reading

Paul Theroux, Still Indulging

At home in Hawaii in 2021. Michelle Mishina Kunz for The New York Times

During the first few months of this platform, when travel experiences as well as variations on biophilia and  conservation became our prevailing themes, a post mentioned one of the great travel writers of our time. 13 years passed and this is his first full reference:

Paul Theroux on Necessary Solitude, Risks and the Joy of Writing

After 60 years of writing and publishing — and almost 60 books — I feel ordering my thoughts on paper to be not a job but a process of my life. You always hear writers complain about the hellish difficulty of writing, but it’s a dishonest complaint.

So many people have it much harder — soldiers, firefighters, field workers, truckers. The writer’s profession is a life of self-indulgence. Continue reading