Get Lost Newsletter & History of the Guidebook

By Jen Leo | Permalink | 1 comment | February 2nd, 2006 | Trackback

Did you see the Get Lost Newsletter yesterday? Get Lost Travel Books is a great indie bookstore in San Francisco. I read there about once a year, and just adore their owner, Lee Azus. Usually their newsletters provide us with book reviews of the latest releases, and notifications of upcoming author events in their store. But this time Lee shook things up a little. He let us know about an article that recently ran in Publishers Weekly called, “Travel’s Long, Strange Odyssey”. It takes a look at the history of travel guidebooks. And what’s to come in the future for guidebooks? Pauline Frommer, will be launching her own budget travel series this June!

Here’s Lee’s wisdom on the subject,

The remarkable thing about the evolution of travel guides is that each new series arises as an attempt to inform an underserved niche of the traveling public. Guides became geared towards the upper-middle class, then the independent traveling middle class, and on to the young traveler with minimal budget. And yet, much of the critical information remains similar: where to eat, sleep and enjoy yourself based on your particular niche. Over the last ten years most of the big guidebook companies seem to have settled on a more or less similar demographic. The niche market seems to be not as young as twenty years ago. This means they have more money and can read about $200.00 hotel rooms in a developing country without laughing out loud. Even the older companies with fuddy-duddy reputations are starting to cater to this trend.

The newsletter also reports which guidebooks are new out this month, and which titles have been his recent bestsellers.

And as a bonus, Lee pointed us in the direction of Helene Goupil’s complimentary article about Get Lost in SF Station. You’ll recognize her name as the editor of Inside Out Travel, the travel ezine. And, I just noticed their blog. They’re always running photo contests, and have great events for travel enthusiasts if you’re swinging through SF.

Get Lost Travel Books
1825 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
415-437-0529
415-437-0531 (fax)
Hours: M-F 10am-7pm
Sat 10am-6pm
Sun 11am-5pm

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any links on the site that pointed to a newsletter signup, if you do want to get subscribe, please contact Get Lost by email at getlost@getlostbooks.com

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