Skift Q&A: The Guidebook Company That’s Survived by Ignoring Everyone
Photo Credit: Moon publisher Bill Newlin. Moon
Skift Take
Moon doesn't have the name recognition of some of the other travel brands, but it's managed to avoid they pitfalls that's taken them down. Newlin's experience demonstrates the value of bucking traditional wisdom.
It's common knowledge that 2013 is not the year of the guidebook. From BBC's massive loss on the sale of Lonely Planet, to Google discarding then handing the Frommer's brand back to its founder (after stripping it for content parts), to the continued hockey-stick decline of book sales for most publishers, it is not the best time to be selling travel guidebooks in bookstores.
Unless you're Avalon.
The Berkeley, CA-based group, which is part of the independent Perseus Book Group, puts out Moon Handbooks and Rick Steves' books, as well as Moon's series about outdoor travel and living abroad, and one-off titles about independent travel and pets. While other publishers have watched revenues crash, Moon's numbers have remained a straight line and captured market share from its anemic competitors. And it's done it by doing everything that digital publishing had decided was wrong: Non-standard book lengths, hand-drawn maps, limited digital rights, and lackluster websites, to name a few
