I was still reeling from the news that Google was closing down Google Reader, and was trying frantically to find an adequate replacement. And so I almost missed the headline in my Twitter feed: “Google quietly pulls plug on Frommer’s print travel guidebooks.“
I did a double take. “What the hell!?” I actually muttered out loud to my computer screen, which is something I do regularly because freelancing has obviously caused me to lose my mind. “Is Google just messing with us now?”
As someone who was planning a two-week trip to Europe in the late summer, I was taken aback. Frommer’s has been an old standard in the travel guide niche for years, and puts out over a hundred titles from year to year. Though the article showed that their online content would remain intact, I couldn’t imagine traveling abroad without several guidebooks in my bag, tangible resources I could easily flip through when necessary. Did that make me old-fashioned?
And what of the Frommer’s authors? According to the Skift article, “the entire future list of Frommer’s titles will not see the light of day,” and already-existing contracts were now up in the air.
But perhaps not all is lost!
Soon after the initial uproar, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Arthur Frommer was buying the Frommer brand back from Google, and that he intended to resume publishing the print guidebooks. “We will be publishing the Frommer travel guides in ebook and print formats,” Frommer told The Associated Press, “and will also be operating the travel site Frommers.com.”
But things still seem up in the air. Google has confirmed that the brand is now back in the hands of its founder, but the company also mentions that the travel content it acquired in the original purchase has been integrated into various Google services. According to a more recent piece on Ars Technica, Google has retained the brand’s social data from Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, Google+, YouTube, and Pinterest, and is integrating it with what is now called Zagat Travel. They are licensing “certain travel content” to Frommer (whatever that means).
So what does this mean for travelers and travel writers alike? Will we flock to competing guides like Lonely Planet (which also recently changed hands)? Will we suck it up and start using e-readers and tablets, slowly getting used to this change, just as we’ve gotten used to every other digitally-induced shift in the publishing industry?
How do you prefer to ingest your travel content? And are you actually more inspired by the possibilities inherent in the prospect of writing web-only travel pieces?