How does a stroll through Provincetown with Michael Cunningham sound? Or an evening listening to Oliver Sachs recount his recent "fern tour" of Oaxaca? And what bookish soul would pass up the chance to ramble around Florence past and present, historical and fictional, with David Leavitt?
Three new travel series--from Crown, National Geographic and Bloomsbury--offer just this sort of diversion for armchair travelers. Borrowing more than a page from the successful Penguin Lives series of biographies that match well-known authors with historical figures, these publishers have asked novelists, poets and memoirists to explore a city or region in a little book of approximately 200 pages that will retail for $20 or less.
Announced in April, the Crown Journeys series is the newcomer on the scene. Its first titles are Cunningham's Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown (Aug.), followed by Edwidge Danticat's After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Haiti (Aug.). Other writers under contract include William Murray on Rome, Christopher Buckley on Washington, D.C., Laura Esquivel on Mexico City, Chuck Palahniuk on Portland, Ore., and James McPherson on Gettysburg. "They're using their shoe leather and taking a walk on the page," said Crown publisher Steve Ross, who plans to publish two Journeys a season with a cover price of $16.
At 4"×7", the Bloomsbury books are the runts of the litter, yet first born. Bloomsbury launched the "occasional" travel series, The Writer and the City, last spring with Edmund White's The Flâneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris. Surprising even its publisher, The Flâneur drew attention and rave reviews from across the print media spectrum, landing on several bestseller lists, including the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times extended list. Eight printings later, White's $16.95 stroll through Paris has sold close to 35,000 copies and is still moving.
Bloomsbury USA's director of marketing and publicity, Sandee Yuen, said the series was conceived when the company's U.K. editor, Liz Calder, was on a flight to Rio and wondered if any great writer had written about the city. The series will continue with Leavitt's Florence, A Delicate Case (June), Jeffery Eugenides on Berlin, Patrick McGrath on New York and Ahdaf Soueif on Cairo.
National Geographic Society announced its Directions series at last year's BEA. For its first title, the press asked a travel writer to stay home for a change; A Writer's House in Wales by Jan Morris (Jan.) was the result. Coming soon from NG Directions: William Kitteridge on the American Southwest, Gary Wills on the University of Virginia, David Mamet on Vermont, John Edgar Wideman on Martinique and Jamaica Kincaid on Nepal. NGP's director of travel publishing, Elizabeth Newhouse, said the press already has more than 30 authors signed up in the series. With roughly six books a year, the series will be going strong through 2005. NGS Directions titles are priced at $20 and distributed to the trade by Simon & Schuster.
But are all of these little books a little too much? A poll of booksellers revealed that hardly any seemed to think that the armchair travel shelf was getting too crowded. "It almost seems like there can't be too many," said Nancy Brown, a buyer at R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn. "That is, if you have a good writer. After all," she added, "there is nothing worse than being with somebody you don't like on a trip."
More surprising than the pile-up of three publishers with the same concept is that none approached a writer signed up by the others. With more than 40 authors now under contract for the three series, it just might get to the point when it will be odd for any writer worth his or her salt not to be doing one.
Part of what draws authors to write these books is their brevity. All are roughly the length of two long magazine articles. The advances are scaled accordingly--what Crown's Ross called "the low-to-mid-five-figure range." Publishers acquire world rights and, given the nature of the books, see many opportunities for foreign sales.
Yet the greatest allure for writers seems to be the opportunity to do something different and highly personal, which, incidentally, makes the books attractive to readers as well. "It was so much fun to do," Michael Cunningham told PW. "And I can't remember the last time I've used the word 'fun' in connection with anything I've written." Cunningham, who lives in New York, had always wanted to tackle Provincetown "as a big, fabulous character." He continued, "My book doesn't tell you where to have dinner or where to stay. It's more about the feel and the soul of the place."
