Yesterday I provided some tips on how to choose a guidebook, my advice being don’t judge a guidebook by its cover, judge it by its author, just as you would any other book. The way I see it, if you’re buying a novel (compelling story aside) you’re buying the book based on the author’s talent, … Read more about Don’t judge a guidebook by its cover: but should you judge it by its brand?
Our research last year for the Syria chapter of our recently released Lonely Planet Syria and Lebanon guidebook required that we visit everything already in the book, along with many more sights that weren’t in the guide. And while we loved visiting all of those “out of the way castles and ruins”, when making decisions … Read more about Our Lonely Planet Syria and Lebanon guidebook: the challenges of guidebook research and other considerations
We’ve just received our author copies of our recently released Lonely Planet Syria and Lebanon guidebook and I’m rather excited to see it in print as we put a lot of hard work into it. Admittedly, seeing a book for the first time is not as thrilling these days as it once was, especially as … Read more about Our Lonely Planet Syria and Lebanon guidebook has hit the shelves!
I have a secret: despite writing and contributing to some 25 Lonely Planet guidebooks, I have to admit I’ve always preferred using Rough Guides – primarily for their fantastic Contexts chapters at the back of the books. While many guidebook publishers have been cutting back on word counts in the history, politics and culture chapters of … Read more about Enriching the experience of travel: it’s all about context
by Terence Carter* Oh yes, there’s more… So far this Lonely Planet thing is a mess of contradictions and odd confessions. Surely the guy who photocopied and stapled together the first copies of a Lonely Planet guide by hand on his kitchen table will come to the rescue and sort out this nonsense once and … Read more about Strange Planet (part 4) or How I learnt to stop worrying and love the Lonely Planet Loophole