Guide Books

 

When Countryman Press, WW Norton's Vermont-based travel imprint, hired me to write a guidebook for them, I knew I faced a special challenge. Their prestige travel book series, Explorer's Guides, were long (150,000 to 200,000 words) and entry-based (with extensive contact information), with a complex and rigid structure. I immediately thought of the tagged SGML software developed for long procedural manuals, and went about drafting a content management program that would allow me to write and update the entries, place them within the required structure — and change that structure programmatically, so that organizational changes wouldn't require rewrites. By linking it with my image library database I could automatically produce photo lists for each of these heavily illustrated chapters. I've now used it successfully for three editions of that original title, plus four other travel titles. I've even adapted it to produce web sites, including this one.

Of course, a good travel book has to go well beyond a collection of entries. It has to be a dream book; it must put you in the middle of a locale, show you exactly what to expect, and guide you around as you find just the right things to do. If a guidebook is doing its job, it will create a fantasy land for you as you read it — and then let you live that fantasy as you act out your dreams. Achieving this in an entry-based book was as much of a challenge as setting up the software. I did this with careful consulting with my client; we settled on book and chapter themes that I could weave through the entries, and a structure within each chapter that moved from general to specific. Organization, after all, means more than updating phone numbers. It means incorporating client goals in every detail of the delivered product.

This is what I can do for you, whether in the form of a 200,000 word book or a 2,000 word article — present your story, your place-based product in a way that suits your goals. I do this by combining deep research, clear organization, and a strong feeling for what makes your locale special. You may need only a short piece: an article, a brochure, a presentation. If you need a long and complex project, however, I have both the experience and the customized software to handle both the text and the images.

Countryman Press released my guidebook, The Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains: An Explorer's Guide, illustrated with 86 of my photos, in June 2003. They were so pleased with the result that they asked me to produce a companion volume, The Shenandoah Valley and the Mountains of the Virginias: An Explorer's Guide released in April 2005 along with the revised 2nd edition of the earlier guidebook. My Smoky Mountain guide went into its third edition in April 2008, and my third guide for Countryman, A Photographer's Guide to the Blue Ridge Parkway, comes out in Spring 2010. I am preparing two new guides for Countryman for 2011 release: North Carolina: An Explorer's Guide and A Photographer's Guide to the Great Smoky Mountains (the latter now completed and scheduled for release).