DG:
Rough Guides is 22 years old - what is it about 2004 that makes DIRECTIONS guides
relevant? MD: A lot has changed in travel since
we published our first guide in 1982. Our readership has widened enormously, independent
travel is much more the norm now, and there are loads more guidebooks around as
a result. Our guides - and those of our competitors - have had to become more
sophisticated and better presented. People travel more, for shorter periods of
time; and many independent travellers aren't on the kinds of budget we travelled
on when we started. Directions was a way of addressing all these issues.
DG:
Are you in fact hoping to appeal to new readers, or is it a case of people doing
more and different kinds of travel? MD: It's
both. There are plenty of loyal Rough Guide readers who are going on short breaks
and want the same kind of information that they're used to getting from Rough
Guides but just don't want to spend so much time reading. Directions offers them
the same Rough Guide mix but in a more quickly digested form. Hopefully we'll
also attract new readers who were previously put off by the text-to-pictures ratio
of traditional Rough Guides. DG: The Directions
guides are very heavily illustrated compared with regular Rough Guides. Where
do all the photos come from? MD: We commissioned
most of them specifically for these books, with photographers making two-week
trips to each city and working their way through a formal shot-list. We filled
in the gaps - seasonal festivals and suchlike - with stock and agency shots.
DG:
The CD idea - it's completely new isn't it? Do you expect a lot of readers to
leave the book at home and just take a laptop? MD:
Some might, but a lot of people have the more portable PDAs now and the great
thing about these e-guides is that they can be uploaded onto these. They're fantastically
searchable, making them a genuinely useful alternative for those tech-savvy folk
who don't want to lug a book around. Plus they have lots of links to websites,
which makes it even easier to book hotels, check out venues and so on.
DG: How did you come up with the name? MD:
Names for a guidebook series are never easy. Above all we wanted a name that clearly
distinguished these books from our regular guidebook series - the Rough Guides
and the First-Time Guides. I guess we thought directions are something everyone
needs when they're travelling, and we felt that in particular this illustrated
the nature of these guides - the fact we do give people very precise ideas
for what they could do on their trip. Specific 'directions', if you like, to enable
them to hit the ground running. DG: How does
a Directions guide actually get created from start to finish? MD:
Well, much like our others. We decide on a title, find an author, agree a synopsis
and picture list, and find a photographer to take the photos while the author
goes off on their research trip, which will usually be a couple of months for
Directions. Most of our authors work in Word; they hand their material in to their
editor, who edits it in Directions templates before going back to them with queries,
suggestions, and occasionally rewrites. Once the editor is happy with the material
he or she passes it to typesetting, who convert the Word files to Quark and lay
the book out, adding in the pictures and maps. The book is then proofread and
the marked-up proofs go back to the author for checking, caption writing and indexing.
DG: And all based at the Strand office in
London? MD: Well that's our main office, but
editing is also done in New York and typesetting and cartography are split between
the London and Delhi offices. DG: So you now
have offices in Delhi and New York as well as London. How does that work, across
the time zones? MD: The most difficult thing
is communication between Delhi and New York, where they're pretty much starting
work just as everyone in India is knocking off. Email helps, of course, although
it's no substitute for conversation. For this, if you're in London you just have
to remember to talk to people in Delhi before lunch and people in New York after
lunch. If you remember to have lunch, that is.
END >
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