There’ll be no more Moon Handbook South Pacific, the author is sad to report. Sales of the 8th edition are less than 40 percent of those of the 6th edition. The blame goes to the Internet (i.e. people who believe they can get all the travel info they need online) and to the new guidebook megalith, the Lonely Planet empire, which has evolved from scrappy backpacker underdog to the field’s dominant force.

When I first started traveling overseas, in the late 1990s, I thought LP was best of breed — I typically brought two guidebooks on each trip, and the Lonely Planet was always the better of the two. (And for the record, I used the Moon in French Polynesia in 1999 and don’t remember being particularly impressed. Then again, I was pretty clueless back then.)

But in recent years, Lonely Planet guides do seem to have gotten slicker and less useful. In Zambia, the Bradt guide was much better; in Nigeria, the Rough Guide was much better. And check the crappy reviews of the Brazil LP. For Morocco, I’m trying the Rough Guide and the Cadogan.

For a few minutes last year, I planned on writing a travel guidebook for my native south Louisiana. Although the idea was eventually abandoned, in retrospect it fits well with my tendency to invest energy in industries of shrinking relevance (newspapers, literary fiction, etc.). Maybe I should start manufacturing buggy whips, or learning the art of VCR repair.

09 December 2007

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