Travel

By Andrew Grabois - Mar 03 , 2008

According to Simba Information’s annual report, “Business of Consumer Book Publishing,” Travel books (including guidebooks, travelogues, and personal narratives) generated $142 million dollars in 2006, placing it seventeenth out of nineteen categories tracked by Simba. Only the sports and graphic novels markets were smaller.

Sales of travel books in 2006 increased a modest 1.43% over 2005; among categories that showed an increase, only gardening—with an increase of less than 0.5%—was smaller. Since 2002, sales of Travel books have decreased more than 9%. Consumer dollars spent on Travel books was 2.3% of all consumer dollars spent on books in 2006. The top four revenue-generating publishers accounted for almost $72 million, or 51% of all consumer dollars spent in the category. The top houses were John Wiley & Sons (Frommer’s), Random House (Fodor’s), Globe Pequot, and Workman Publishing.

The annual output of new Travel books increased in 2006. According to Bowker, 5,155 new titles and editions classified as Travel were published in the U.S. in 2006, an increase of more than 4% over 2005. While output in 2006 was 19% higher than the total recorded in 2002, it was 3% less than the peak year of 2004, when 5,304 new Travel books were published. Below is a graph charting the trend of new Travel books published since 2002:

The largest trade houses published 501 new Travel books in 2005 (the last year that Bowker published separate output statistics for the trade), which was 5.11% less than 2004 and 28% less than 2002, when 695 new Travel books were published. In 2005, Travel accounted for 2.18% of all books published by the largest trade houses.

The average suggested retail price in 2005 for Travel books published as hardcovers was $25.40, $3.00 less than the average SRP for all adult nonfiction hardcovers. For Travel books published as adult nonfiction Trade paperbacks, the average SRP in 2005 was $17.25, 99 cents more than the average SRP for all adult nonfiction Trade paperbacks.

Almost half of all new Travel books published in 2006 were about the U.S., while a third were about Europe. The only surprise among the rest was that there were so many books about Africa, which was the subject of almost as many books as Canada, and more books than South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. The table below shows the percentage distribution of Travel books published in 2006, compiled from Bowker’s Books In Print database:

The regional breakdown of U.S. Travel books seem to mirror recent trends in the Electoral College:

• West = 40%
• South = 24%
• Northeast = 22%
• Midwest = 14%

New Travel books about Europe (liberally defined to include Great Britain and Ireland) reflect an understandable comfort with English-speaking countries, and an almost irrational love of all things Italian (same thing in cooking category). The percentage breakdown of European Travel books published last year was:
Great Britain = 30%

• Italy = 18%
• France = 16%
• Spain & Portugal = 8%
• Ireland = 7%
• Germany = 3%

So what’s selling in the Travel category? For the last three years, the category has been dominated by Patricia Schultz. Her 1,000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler’s Life List, is a phenomenon. It has become a combination of Zagat and US News & World Report for travelers, with locales desperate to make her list. 1,000 Places has been a NY Times bestseller for more than three years and has 2.2 million copies in print. Schultz is also the Executive Producer of a reality series of the same name.

Schultz’s new book, 1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die, was published this June, and after just one week, the paperback edition is already one of the top five best selling Travel books on both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble (and number four on the New York Times paperback advice list).

In addition to the 1,000 Places franchise, the top sellers in the Travel category are Way Off the Road: Discovering the Peculiar Charms of Small Town America, By Bill Geist (an enormously popular author of travelogues), The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2007, by Bob Sehlinger and Len Testa, and Rick Steves’ Italy 2007, by Rick Steves.

There is no Travel category on Michael Cader’s deals database. I suspect that is because publishers of Travel books think that they would loose their competitive advantage if they showed their hand too early. Computer book publishers are also like that, and I don’t think it is a coincidence that Cader doesn’t have a Computer category either. To see what publishers have planned for Travel books, then, I had to execute a keyword search. There weren’t many hits. The ones to watch are:

• The Year of Traveling Dangerously, by Chuck Thompson (Holt)
• Around the World in 80 Meals, by Nan Lyon (Red Rock Press)
• The Land that Trousers Forgot, by Cash Peters (Three Rivers Press)
• Biting the Wax Tadpole: Adventures in World Travel, by Elizabeth Little (Melville House)
• Dixieland Delight: One Fan’s Quest to Tour the Southeastern Football Conference, by Clay Travis (HarperCollins)