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SELLING BOOKS
Polly Pattullo -- Selling books: a problem for publishers
and writers. My experience with Last Resorts (on the impact
of tourism in the Caribbean) was that the small and impoverished
Caribbean distributor (the book had a UK publisher - Latin America
Bureau) had problems of distribution - large areas to cover,
small volume of local readers, and getting money out of bookshops
a problem. Having said that, I was able to identify one major
outlet: Papillote Wilderness Retreat in Dominica. This small
(six-bedroom) guest-house has sold more than 100 copies of my
book. Not by any magical hard sell but because its clientele
are the exact market for the book.
Wayne Bernhardson -- I have noticed some of the comments
from the Adventures in Nature authors (and others as well) about
promoting our work. While certainly the publisher should bear
a major responsibility in promotion, I believe that authors
cannot and should not even want to leave that responsibility
exclusively up to publishers. I think it's possible to do this
and even make a bit of money on the side, as I have done. While
I was never fortunate enough to have royalties for my LP books,
LP was progressive enough to pay me (and other authors) to promote
their own books in slide shows and other presentations at venues
ranging from travel bookstores to public libraries and travel
writing workshops. My own judgment, however, was that in the
long run LP's agenda and mine were not the same, but at the
same time I enjoyed the public presentations tremendously.
This also ties in with my belief, articulated earlier in this
conference by Herb Hiller and seconded by Maribeth Mellin, that
we are better off establishing our regional credibility and
deepening (I prefer the Spanish profundizar in this context)
our knowledge of the destinations we cover, rather than zigzagging
all over the globe.
Thanks partly to LP's high profile in the guidebook business,
I had considerable credibility when I approached the Corporación
with the idea of a series of slide lectures at travel bookstores
throughout the western U.S., with a handful of dates in the
Midwest and on the East Coast. Using some existing contacts
but also stores that I did not know before, I set up an itinerary
and a budget for the tour and, thanks to an open-minded CEO
at the Corporación who had a great deal of autonomy,
got the budget approved. They in turn provided me a fair amount
of promotional material.
In the northern summer of 2000, over the course of 15 talks,
we had an average audience of about 60 persons, with a minimum
of 10 and a maximum of 150. I made enough money on the project
to justify it and, while I don't wish to disclose financial
details publicly, the Santiago-based Corporación de Promoción
Turistica found it an economical way of reaching an audience
that was self-selected for interest in traveling to Chile.
That said, in retrospect I think I undervalued myself, as
the effort of arranging such an ambitious itinerary was more
time-consuming than I had anticipated, and I have since raised
my rates. At the same time, last year's effort has laid the
groundwork for future projects of this sort which I hope to
continue as I do a series of books on Chile and Argentina for
Moon/Avalon, my current publisher. These are essentially synergistic
activities--getting paid for promoting my own books, in addition
to any royalties that come my way. This year, because of administrative
changes at the Corporación, there was only enough money
to undertake a smaller series of talks, which I did at REI stores
in the Bay Area, Seattle, Portland and Denver, some of which
were very well attended despite the events of September 11.
Nevertheless, I hope and expect that we will be able to restore
and even expand the series.
Sometimes, however, events are beyond our control. Late last
year, I proposed a similar program to Argentina's Secretaría
de Turismo de la Nación and to the Argentine equivalent
of the Corporación, pointing out my success with the
Chileans, but despite their enthusiasm and strong support from
the Argentine consulate in Los
Angeles, the current Argentine economic crisis (the country
is on the point of defaulting its international debt) made it
impossible to get funding. While I think this is a real possibility
for the future, one must also be aware of political changes--most
of my current contacts, for instance, are with people allied
with the current Argentine administration, which suffered an
overwhelming defeat in recent congressional elections and is
unlikely to win re-election to the presidency--meaning that
I may have to deal with a whole new bureaucracy the next time
around.
RESOURCE PROTECTION
Herb Hiller -- One of the conditions most troubling
about Florida tourism is that the Florida Commission on Tourism,
which is the policy body behind the Visit Florida marketing
arm, dictates an agenda limited to marketing. No investment
is made in protecting the resources that tourism exploits. So,
for example, the Commission on Tourism is unconcerned about
preventing beach erosion, about river or lake pollution, about
eradicating pest trees from forests, about overuse of springs.
The typical response would be that other state and county
interests look after these matters. There is a state Department
of Environmental Protection and a state Department of Community
Affairs responsible for coastal conditions.
Yet here is the dominant sector of the Florida economy, that
depends on these resources, unwilling to occupy the bully pulpit
in behalf of conservation. Obviously, the Commission on Tourism
and Visit Florida can't be seen as acting in a politically partisan
manner. But questions of conservation and historic preservation
are not partisan matters. Both parties understand the values
of natural and historical resources.
In many respects, these resources are troubled precisely because
there are no private sector bodies that speak to their protection.
Only state and local governmental agencies and NGOs advocate
protection. It would be somewhat understandable for private
sector companies to remain silent about these issues if, for
example, their products are merely consumptive or technological
or otherwise not even remotely concerned with such resources.
But tourism is directly involved in their use. The resources
are finite.
I ask if any of you are familiar with places where resource
protection is a priority of tourism promotion agencies and whether
you know of anything that has been written on the topic. Are
you aware of any consumer magazines or newspaper travel sections
that have tackled the subject or even regularly report on this?
Joe Franke -- This is a common problem all over the
world, and one of the reasons that I think that the "ecotourism"
industry has, with perhaps a few exceptions, done very little
to protect the resources that it utilizes for profit. As the
author of a guidebook to the Costa Rican protected areas system
(Costa Rica's Parks and Preserves: A Visitor's Guide - Mountaineers
Books) I've had the opportunity to see firsthand how little
of the money collected from people who come to the country specifically
to visit the park system goes back to the parks, while degrading
these areas through over use, and how the poorly regulated hotel
industry has further eroded resources around the park boundaries.
While I don't have specific figures on hand, I'll stick my neck
out far enough to say that I believe that the majority of funds
from entrance fees has gone to service Costa Rica's crippling
debts to the IMF and World Bank, and to the general services
funds of the government.
Nancy Johnson -- Herb Hiller raises a good question:
How does a state or region effectively protect its environment
AND promote tourism? I really appreciated the comment of George
Leposky in his introduction to the effect that in the 1960s
he "inadvertently killed the oldest living thing in Illinois
by writing about it." I had an elderly friend read one of my
stories about Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island, British Columbia,
and comment, "But aren't you afraid if people read about this
place, it will be overrun, like Yellowstone Park?" Many recognize
the problem. What is the solution?
This issue links to the Newdesk's question: What do journalists
covering environmental tourism want from government offices,
travel agencies and their own publishers? We want help! We want
to be able to print the truth, not just the pretty parts. We
want to know that what we write about is recognized as valuable.
But not another tax-gobbling law or impossible agency oversight,
please!
Perhaps "bully pulpit" is the way to go. Instead of all gloss
all the time, the state tourism office should give space in
its brochures to how and why tourists should be careful. Give
space in a meaningful way, not just another "protect against
forest fires" logo on the back. Like Herb, I would like to know,
"if any of you are familiar with places where resource protection
is a priority of tourism promotion agencies and whether you
know of anything that has been written on the topic. Are you
aware of any consumer magazines or newspaper travel sections
that have tackled the subject or even regularly report on this?
Joe Franke -- One of the problems with the execution
of sustainable tourism projects and a serious analysis of "ecotourism"
is that it has been treated in an overly simplistic manner by
funding agencies and by most of the academic community. Unfortunately,
this sort of limited view is parroted by most travel writers.
I think that ecotourism's promise as a stand-alone, market
based solution to the need for environmental protection and
"sustainable development" for local human populations has been
overstated. If treated as such, responsible tourism will be
forever relegated to "niche market" status, while the rest of
the tourism industry continues on its destructive path.
In reality, a model of truly sustainable tourism would be
included within a holistic ecological/social model of development,
at least on the national level, if not bioregionally. I don't
believe that an ecotourism industry that is not part of an integrated
ecological/social plan can ultimately be anything but a museum
diorama, particularly in the context of repressive countries
governed by the whims of transnational corporations and greedy
oligarchs. Even in the case of successful community based projects,
the likelihood is that the rest of the country will go to hell,
even if a small piece if preserved as a result of responsible
tourism projects.
In a holistic development model, traditional, unsustainable
tourism would be rejected and sustainable models adopted as
a matter of course.
While the resources gained from community based, socially
responsible tourism will help that community resist destructive
forces, they will eventually be overwhelmed by systemic ecological
damage or outside social pressures unless communities and the
ecosystem they depend upon remain healthy as a whole. Responsible
tourism can act as a small part of that whole, but only a small
part.
Jean McNeil -- I wonder if the problem with environmental
journalism is one of categories, and a reluctance on the part
of editors and journalists to see beyond what many editors seem
to think of as the environment ghetto. There's no doubt the
environment has slipped down the news agenda.
I used to be a journalist and editor for Friends of the Earth,
a UK and international environmental campaigning organisation.
We covered many topics that we felt fell under the umbrella
of environmental concerns: genetically-modified organisms, organic
food, nuclear reprocessing plants, global warming and, of course,
ecotourism. I was in the luxurious position of not being freelance
and having to fight to get my stories placed; they were all
used for our campaigning magazine and membership materials.
(This is otherwise known as preaching to the converted.)
That job alerted me to the fact that, as Ron points out, the
'environment' had its heyday in the late 1980s and early to
mid 1990s. Then it was a discrete category of thought and concern.
But increasingly the environment - in whatever manifestation,
from watershed erosion caused by loss of rainforest cover, to
inadequate septic tanks in hotels located in pristine areas,
to climate change and global warming to overfishing - is not
an isolated concept, a single horse to which a bandwagon can
be conveniently hitched. It interacts with a nexus of issues,
and they are political, economic, social and cultural.
The increasing complexity of environmental issues makes reporting
on them, especially news as opposed to features reporting, challenging.
A new concept of the 'environment' may be needed - just as I
suggested in a previous post that a new concept of tourism is
needed - to take into account globalisation, economic rights,
and local social realities.
Editors of magazines and newspapers that run pieces on the
environment have to realise we not going to return to the clarity
of the save-the-rainforest days, even if single-issue campaigns
are what stimulated so much concern in the first place. In a
time when the 'environment' as well as ecotourism are likely
to be positioned in our culture as just another lifestyle issue,
about consumption and concerns that lead principally to our
own satisfaction, I wonder if our task as writers is to be more
thoughtful and more tenacious in pursuit of the real, often
hidden, story.
REPORT FROM VENEZUELA
BY DOMINIC HAMILTON
In 1999 in Venezuela,
the Corporacion de Turismo levied a 1% tax on all tourism businesses
to "improve the country's promotion abroad." To be honest, I
don't know if their presence at International Travel Fairs (or
the like) has improved, since I don't attend them. But, suffice
to say that two years on, Venezuela is yet to boast an 'official'
tourism website.
This is criminal, considering the low costs that such a website
would take to build, and the amount of revenues which the Corporacion
must have received from their 'un porcentico'...
On a more positive note, in line with Venezuela's new 'Bolivarian'
Constitution, the Pemon Indians of Canaima National Park have
begun to become far more involved with its management and decision-making.
It's hoped that the park's director will soon be a Pemon. There
have been long-running conflicts between the Pemon and the National
Parks Institute (INPARQUES) which administers it.
I mention Canaima because it's a prime example (and I'm guilty
of it too) of travel journalists and the media writing 'blinkered'
articles about a natural and fragile destination -- something
that's been touched on in this discussion. While tens of thousands
of tourists visit Canaima every year to get a glimpse of Angel
Falls, the local Pemon's lagoon is being polluted, the aqueduct
for the village has taken years to build, and outside developers
are putting up 'posadas' and hotels on their land with no consultation.
In my guidebook
to Venezuela, I tried hard to encourage readers to contract
local Pemon operators and to look for independent alternatives
to the group travel which dominates the region. The downside
to that, in my experience, is that the fledgling Indian operators
are often disorganized, sometimes unreliable and can't match
the comfort levels of larger operators. This is mainly a question
of capital, and experience.
One example is a great Pemon guide who was starting out. I
put his name and number in the book. But then he changed his
cellphone, and no-one can get hold of him! As a writer (because
it looks bad in your book to have 'dead' phone numbers), you
become more sceptical and perhaps more dismissive of the smaller,
probably more ethical and low impact, operators.
The long-term solution to this problem is to encourage governments
and international agencies to pay more attention, and to fund,
these smaller local initiatives.
The short-term solution (for guidebooks at least) is the internet.
Lonely Planet now has a 'reboot' your guidebook option. I imagine
others will follow suit. But I think the writers can also (coupled
with a bit of self-promotion...) create a website themselves
where they can include the updates they receive, and mention
this in their books. I do believe it's our duty to dig deeper,
and to report on the ugly too. As someone mentioned before,
you can do this subtly, and still make the article saleable.
REPORT FROM THE LEWIS AND CLARK TRAIL BY JULIE FANSELOW
I live and work mostly in the American West, which has been
the site of much heat and not much light on the issue of public
lands use, on everything from logging and fire management to
President Clinton's 11th hour round of national monument designations.
In this region, the very words "ecotourism" and "environmentalist"
can divide people. On one hand, an activist in Sun Valley, Idaho,
has one definition of what it means to be an environmentalist.
A rancher 50 miles away on the Camas Prairie has another definition,
and says he can back it up by the fact his family have been
ranching on that land for four generations. Tribal members from
the Shoshone Bannock and Nez Perce nations have still other
definitions, and theirs are backed up by centuries -- perhaps
millenia -- on this land.
One major issue I'll be facing personally over the next few
years is the impact of tourism on the Lewis and Clark Trail.
Public lands people in the Northern Rockies seem very conscious
of the potential impact of the trail's upcoming (2003-2006)
bicentennial, when as many as 25 million people may descend
on areas that are still quite pristine. I want to know how I
can work with (mostly federal, Forest Service, as well as tribal)
officials to identify areas that could be seriously affected
by heavy tourist traffic, and perhaps help to mitigate that
impact. But I see a dichotomy: Some of the areas most likely
to be negatively affected are also those that best help modern
travelers understand what Lewis and Clark and their party experienced.
As a journalist, what's my responsibility -- to the land, to
my readers, to the tribes, to all of the above?
REPORT ON HERITAGE TOURISM BY JONATHAN LERNER
I am blessed and cursed by not having gone to J-school and
never having had a class in journalistic ethics. I just try
to tell the truth as I see it. My travel writing has been mostly
about architecture and preservation, not environment, but analogous
questions arise. When I'm doing a story with a preservation
angle, I try to make a point of describing both the restored
sites (the ones the local tourism bureau likes to showcase,
and which most travelers find easier and most comfy to tour)
as well as places I find (because I make a point of looking
for them) that have been overlooked or are in ruins. The latter
are as evocative as the former, and add an extra dimension.
The fact that they're not considered worth saving, or that there
just aren't the resources to restore them, can teach readers
that real historic places are not shiny theme parks, and that
the real world is full of problems.
I'm saying that I feel responsible to describe a place in
the fullness of its contradictions. Real places aren't perfect.
Old towns always contain important places that are tragically
lost, or going that way fast.
I also make a point of looking for sites that tell the diversity
of a place. Not just the great house, but the slave quarters,
even though the quarters have usually melted back into the ground
ages ago, since they were built of mud wattle and not stone,
and often that's pretty much all I can find to say about them.
Or, the house where a suffragist convention was held, or the
native American shell mound, or -- but you could spend the rest
of your life looking for these, given how invisible this strand
of history is -- the landmarks of gay history. This is just
to say: I want to put all the obscure richness I can fit into
my 1700 words (or whatever it is). The darker bits add the depth.
As to the second question--"Is it appropriate for me, as an
outsider, to encourage tribal members..."--I don't think it's
appropriate for you to go to the tribe yourself and ask or tell
them what you think they ought to do. But it certainly is for
you to point out and regret, in your writing, from the point
of view you concede as an observer, whatever you think is missing
that they might provide. In the preservation context, I might
write something like, "Haywood Plantation is a wonderful example
of sensitive restoration. Unfortunately, the state DOT's insistence
on widening River Road meant cutting down an allee of irreplaceable
300 hundred year old live oaks. And the county council has rejected
a zoning plan that would have prevented additional subdivisions
adjacent to the plantation; two are now planned. So see this
gem right away, while you still can appreciate it."
Of course, that last line only encourages people to overrun
the delicate site...which brings us back to the central conundrum
of responsible travel writing.
REPORT FROM NEW
ZEALAND BY POLLY STUPPLES
Tourism is New
Zealand's second largest industry. Travellers have always
visited New Zealand for its accessible wilderness. In the last
few years they have also been coming to view our marine mammals
and unusual birdlife. Yet "ecotourism", as a concept, is still
fairly young in New Zealand. As we encourage more and more tourists
to visit this country, their impacts are becoming more and more
visible. And there is much heated debate about development within
national parks. Is a gondola through a pristine valley eotourism
or ecoterrorism?
REPORT FROM MONTANA BY PERRI KNIZE
A few years back, I wrote a story for Traveler about how the
state of Montana became the new chic place to go. These things
do not happen organically. The rise of Montana from a place
nobody had heard of--in the early 80s, the average New Yorker
only knew that it was cold and up north somewhere--to a hotter
than hot destination, was a carefully orchestrated and deliberate
and highly successful campaign launched by the state and its
tourism industry.
How did the state accomplish its meteoric rise to *the* place
to go of the early 90s? Travel writers. They paid for fam trips
for planeloads of travel writers, hosted conventions for them,
wined and dined them, got them assignments. Suddenly Montana
was on the covers of all the travel magazines. I can name the
month--March of 1989. And that summer the state became changed
forever. It was a deluge, no, a siege, of Winnebagos and dudes
and millions upon millions of people playing out their western
cowboy and nature freak fantasies in this newly discovered place.
There was a direct and highly obvious correlation between travel
writers and the Montana phenomenon.
And you know what the former state officials who created the
campaign said to me? They said they were sorry. They said they
didn't realize. They were environmentalists who thought tourism
would save Montana from the loggers and miners by making trout
streams more valuable as is, than as dumping grounds for mine
effluent. But the sheer volume of visitors and their impacts
were overwhelming, and the infrastructure and the society there--an
agricultural society, by and large--couldn't deal with it. The
social and economic and ecologic impacts have been huge. Now
the environmentalists say "just give me a good, clean mine."
One tourism operator who got into it thinking he was being an
environmentalist now says he has come to believe there is nothing
sustainable or responsible about tourism.
There is a direct correlation here:
travel writers write---
>people come---
>degradation.
Hell, yes, we should be looking at our role! Please get rid
of all the travel guidebooks tomorrow. I think it will help
enormously. Of course, I don't expect that to happen. But that
is no excuse for not examining our role in what is happening
in the world and making personal choices about what our role
will be in future.
Really, the larger question here is: why has tourism become
the fastest growing and the biggest industry in the world? What
is it tourists are seeking abroad that they can't find at home?
Why do we fail to find fascination with our own backyards, which
are every bit as exotic to a Spaniard as the Spaniard's is to
us? What does this say about the wealthiest few who annually
"bag" new destinations?
I think if travel writers want to help the health of the earth
and its societies, we should now make it very, very fashionable
to stay home and appreciate what we have there, and gain greater
depth and understanding of ourselves through our own, local
environment. We're very good at what we do. We can make staying
home sexy.
PROPOSALS
Ron Mader -- Here are a few ideas with guestimated pricetags:
1) Find the $ for "Environmental/Travel Research" which could
be divided between publications aimed at both academic and popular
readership. Cost:$25-100,000
2) Offer internet workshops for those local leaders working
toward environmental conservation or tourism development. Cost:
$5-50,000
2) Create a synergistic network of websites dedicated to Environmental
travel and establish a larger advertiser base. Cost: Free/Time
involved
3) Encourage local roundtable discussions around the globe.
Choose a quarterly date or allow individuals to establish their
own calendar. Announcements and summaries are posted online
the appropriate Planeta.comforum. Cost: Free/Time involved
Susan Cunningham -- I dream of producing a magazine
and/or a Web site on adventure travel in Asia. It would do something
unprecedented here by giving readers background on environmental
threats and local politics of the pretty places they visit.
Right, but who would advertise?
Herb Hiller -- I would like us to consider our own
publishing arm for a literature that focuses on the quality
of place. By "place" I mean a combination of natural and built
heritage too, and of how travelers might better get in touch
with what makes places special. I have in mind less conventionally
formatted guidebooks but more essayistic work, works more like
the Insight Guides or perhaps Travellers Tales, written by people
authoritative about their places. The purpose would combine
both a journalistic wish to inform and an advocate's urge to
protect. The connecting element would be people's desire to
travel and experience places more fully at first hand.
Publications I have in mind would be to travelers and armchair
travelers. The goal would be to make travelers more environmentally
aware by helping shape their travels, broadly speaking, around
culture and heritage, to see natural resources as part of what
makes places special and to define sustainability as something
not the narrow concern of professional environmentalists but
of everyone who values the importance of what's familiar and
cherished in our lives, especially in these times of fast change.
I have in mind some wedding of a dynamic geography that combines
learning with the pleasure of travel experience and a non-didactic,
non-confrontational way of drawing people to care about environment
-- a kind of on-the-move classroom of the traveler. I see this
work as our own, on our own site (of course widely linked),
and I can imagine that, driven in good measure by advocacy,
the effort would attract financial support from one or more
sources like the Pew Charitable Trusts so that we might also
produce our work in print, either print-on-demand or more conventionally.
One factor that would lend the effort credibility would be precisely
who we are: writers authoritative about our places rather than
simply PCs for hire, slinging guidebook hash without local insight.
As to who the "we" are, this, like every other aspect of what
I propose, in the first instance is for debate among ourselves
as conference participants here in Ron's world.
We need not be more subject to what's out of our hands than
we already think we are. Instead, we might shape with our own
hands the opportunities that others ignore. It's the difference
between keeping focused on where we've been and looking to where
we might be. I understand the complaints. We can turn our own
complaints around.
Jonathan Tourtellot -- Here's another proposal for
coping with some of the issues raised in both this forum and
that on eco-certification. As has been noted, travel writers
themselves can take some initiative in the degree to which environmental
issues are included in what we write. That extends to the destinations
and facilities we cover.Guidebook writers cannot be expected
to perform any kind of systematic certification on their tight
schedules, but that does not mean that good and bad environmental
practices need be ignored. Would it not be feasible to work
up a set of easy-to-check sustainable-tourism indicators for
travel writers? That way, we can begin to raise awareness (including
our own) in the course of what we are doing anyway.
It may be a long time before the various certification programs
coalesce into something readily recognizable by the public.
There is no reason we travel writers can't in the meantime add
sustainability to our basic job: reviewing destinations. If
anyone is interested working up such a set of indicators and
debugging it, I'd be happy to host an online working group.
The goal is not perfection; it's simply to get sustainability--and
preservation of sense of place--onto the journalistic table.
Ron Mader -- Jonathan Tourtellot wrote and suggesting
setting up a working group to create an index of sustainability
for journalists. This is an excellent idea. Would there be any
chance we could find funding to develop the idea and bring it
to fruition? Otherwise, we are all working on borrowed time.
Herb Hiller -- If the committee thinks things through
well, costs should be minimal. It's mainly the time of those
who think this might be a good enough idea to work on. Assume
we think this through to where the books that could result would
be an important step in aligning tourism more closely with natural
and heritage resource protection, that objective would likely
elicit a backer. Even at this preliminary point, I can imagine
the backer would come on board in part to provide the equivalent
of an advance for the one or two writers (or multiple contributors
to an anthology or two) who initially get involved; to provide
edit support and to help the group see through those steps that
would get the parent body establish buzz for the project. Clearly,
the need is to get the traveling public and the conservation/heritage
community to turn to the website. If the books are well represented
and reviewed and if online sales result, we may well find a
distributor for the titles and get Barnes & Noble and others
on board.
Bill Hinchberger -- I'd like to see a portal that highlights
independent destination websites around the world. Like Ron,
I envision opportunities to pool resources, share back office
costs and offer package deals to advertisers. Last year, I collected
a modest list of sites similar to BrazilMax. I contacted some
of their owners. The response was lukewarm. But I'm not discouraged.
If we can get a core group of sites together first, perhaps
we'll encounter more success in our recruiting. |
