Tyler Brûlé on the future of print publishing

How in the name of God does Tyler Brûlé do it? Aside from publishing Monocle, a News and General Interest magazine that is easily one of the most creative and well-produced publications of the past ten or twenty years, his byline seems to pop up almost everywhere I look.

I occasionally forget to read his always well argued weekly column about travel and global ideas in the International Herald-Tribune, but no worries there: It’s archived on the IHT’s website, which I tend to find a bit crisper and easier to read than the broadsheet itself. (TB’s Fast Lane column is sadly no longer a part of the Financial Times’ weekend edition, but it too can be accessed online.)  

• Here’s TB in today’s Independent (UK), with a refreshing take on the print-is-dead mantra.
• Winkreative is a design and ad agency featuring TB as one of its biggest stars and brightest minds.  
• Monocle’s seventh issue is on discriminating newsstands now.

How I Became a Travel Writer

About a week ago, the web content and marketing manager at Portland, Oregon’s Powell’s Bookstore invited me to become a guest blogger on the store’s website. I was asked to write about my career as a travel journalist — specifically, how I’d managed to made it happen.

Before I started writing the post, I decided to go online for inspiration. I’ve seen countless how-I-did-it essays on freelance writers’ websites in the past, and since I wasn’t entirely sure where to start my own story, I figured I’d take a clue from those who’d gone before.  As I soon found out, however, that’s a hellava lot easier said than done.

And why’s that? Well … my own how-I-did-it story is rather long. As of this morning, I’m already more than 1,500 words into the post, and I haven’t yet said word one about travel writing. Bad times for me.

At any rate, here are the first few paragraphs; I’ll post a quick note sometime later this week if the (significantly abridged) Powell’s essay goes online.

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HOW I BECAME A TRAVEL WRITER — AND HOW YOU CAN, TOO   [By Dan Eldridge]

I’ve been working as a freelance writer – on and off – for more than a decade now. I’ve been doing it seriously – meaning professionally, and full-time – for almost five years. But throughout my entire career as a music journalist, during which I was also an occasional lifestyle and features writer, I don’t believe I was ever seriously asked how I’d gotten my job. It would come up occasionally, of course, but only as a way to break the ice during an awkward conversation. I could be wrong here, but I’m fairly certain I was never approached by a journalism student or a would-be writer who really, truly wanted to know how I’d built my career, and how he could do the same.  

But about two years ago, while I was working as the music editor at a newspaper in Pittsburgh, I decided to take a slight occupational detour. I was sick to death of writing record reviews. And even though I’d only been on staff for 14 months, the experience of spending 40 hours a week in a high-paneled cubicle was draining my soul of nearly all its joy. So I decided I would become a travel writer.  

It’s been an interesting couple of years, to say the least. Since waving goodbye to my cube, I’ve written a guidebook for Avalon Travel Publishing; I’ve contributed to two Lonely Planet guides; and I’ve had travel articles published everywhere from a magazine in the U.K. to the Sunday edition of my own hometown’s daily newspaper. I’ve studied the craft of freelance foreign correspondence with journalists from the Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, and the BBC. I’ve travelled to Thailand, Italy, Turkey, the Czech Republic, and Germany. And believe me when I tell you this: I’ve entertained dozens of emails from would-be writers, all of them interested in learning how, exactly, I managed to secure so many travel writing contracts. At first, I responded wholeheartedly to every last email, but for the most part I’ve since stopped. I can’t seem to rationalize spending so much time on a non-income generaing activity. But in the essay that follows, I’ve done my best to explain how it was that my current career came about. Please be aware, though, that this is not your average service-journalism piece. It’s actually more of a brief autobiography than a how-to, and to a large degree it focuses more on how I went about my career than exactly what it was I did. I hope you find it useful.    

[TO BE CONTINUED ... ]                

Booklist Selects Moon Handbooks for Best Travel Series of the Year

According to Jen Rios, the Online Marketing Manager for both Avalon Travel and Seal Press, Booklist has selected the Moon Handbooks line of guidebooks as the Best Travel Series of the Year for 2007. In the rather diminutive world of travel guidebook publishing, this is of course an especially coveted honor.

The anouncement was made in a recent Booklist article by Brad Hooper. The piece is pasted below.

Anyone interested in purchasing a copy of my recently published Moon Handbooks Pittsburgh guide, by the way, can do so at Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com, among others contenders [Wal-Mart, Target]. To purchase a signed copy of my Pittsburgh guidebook at a discounted rate, visit the in-progress Pioneer Content site. 

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TRAVEL ROUNDUP: Best Travel Series of the Year, 2007 [By Brad Hooper, 15 September 2007] [BOOKLIST]

By their very name, Moon guides have always suggested visits to locales off the beaten tourist path, and, indeed, for a long time, Moon guides did focus on the more distant or remote or not-usually-thought-of places that are nevertheless exciting to visit. These days, of course, Moon guides take you not only to Costa Rica and Fiji but also to more standard locations, such as London and Ireland. And Moon guides these days have such an easy feel in the hand: they open well, and the pages are just the right size, with lots of information presented in uncrowded fashion. And the information is full but precise, evaluative but not pompous (“The only downside to the London Eye is the price”). Such a good spirit arises from the pages of a Moon guide that the reader can’t help but want to board a plane and make every trip a soulful experience. Along with listings of things to do and places to see and restaurant and hotel recommendations, each volume in the series has a concluding section called “Background,” which performs exactly that task: imparting history, culture, current events, and other basic information the well-informed traveler needs to know.

Life lessons from Kimora Lee Simmons

My latest television obsession? The Style Network’s Life in the Fab Lane, a reality series about the sometimes-infuriating-but-always-entertaining life of entrepreneur (and proud mother) Kimora Lee Simmons. The basic premise of the show is that Kimora has quite a lot going for her these days. Aside from being a former Karl Lagerfeld runway model (and still drop-dead gorgeous at the age of 32), she’s also the former wife of Russell Simmons–he’s the founder of Def Jam Records who is probably best known today as the undisuted godfather of hip-hop culture. During the couple’s marriage, Russell launched Baby Phat, an urban fashion company often described as the “corporate sibling” of Russell’s Phat Farm brand. Kimora acts as the public face of Baby Phat, and she and Russell have somehow managed to continue on as relatively amiable business partners, if not life partners.        

The first time I saw Kimora’s show, only five or ten minutes had passed before I was tempted to post something nasty about what a horrible, mean person she obviously is. This woman has the rich-bitch personality thing down to a perfect science, and if there’s anything I hate in the business world, it’s seeing privileged folks treating the less fortunate without respect. And that’s exactly what Kimora seemed to be doing every thirty seconds or so on her show.

But then another episode aired, and then one more came on after that, and before I knew it, it was the middle of the afternoon and I was still wearing my pyjamas and drinking bad coffee. I was hooked. And that’s because after a couple more 30-minute stints with Kimora, I finally got it: She’s not so much a horrible person as she is a person who lives her life under the constant scrutiny of the public eye, and has managed to develop something of an oddball sense of humor as a way of dealing with the inevitable stress. From what I can tell, the woman actually has a very healthy sense of humor. Better than being like Britney.

But not everyone in the fashion world agrees with that conclusion. I did a quick Google search that turned up all sorts of gossipy bits about K-Sims. Check out this fantastic feature from New York magazine, for instance, which is titled Kimora Lee Simmons, the New Queen of Conspicuous Consumption. (Ouch!) Here are a few more interesting pieces from various blogs and the MSM alike. Enjoy! >>>

• Kimora’s motor vehicle violation [Michelle Malkin]   
• Kimora’s pimped-out MySpace page
• Kimora’s mug shot [Smoking Gun]
• The Simmons’ big split [People]
• A look at the Saddle Brook mansion [USA Today]

Dov Charney & American Apparel Newswire

Of all the articles in all the community newspapers bemoaning (or rejoicing) the almost inevitable arrival of an American Apparel™ retail store in their hometown, this one is probably the best I’ve read yet. And it seems to have been written by a university student, no less! [The Minnesota Daily]

I wasn’t even aware of this, but here’s a piece about affordable ”green-clothing” options that mentions our beloved AA. Apparently 20% of the overall cotton used in the company’s various garments is organic, and what’s more, plans are in place to bump that figure up to 80% over the next four years. Scroll down to the fourth paragraph for the AA mention. [Green Options]   

And just in case you haven’t yet read it, which you almost certainly have (or at least should have) if you’re interested at all in the goings on of Dov and AA, this story by journalist Josh Dean is probably one of the top three profile pieces ever written about the man and his organization. [Inc.] 

This article also rates especially high. It’s a rather long read, but absolutely worth your time, assuming you’re interested in learning how Charney first came up with the idea to sell his clothes direct to customers in retail stores. It’s an amusing story. [New York Times Magazine]

Philly’s Living Proof Magazine

Speaking of unusual publications based in Philadelphia, I just visited a coffee shop in Philly’s Old City neighborhood, where I picked up the second issue of what appears to be an alternative sports magazine. Definitely not the sort of thing you tend to see every day, even in a town as sports crazed as this one.

The magazine — it’s called Living Proof — is one of those ultra-small, pocket-sized publications. If you live in a relatively large city, you’ve seen these before — they seem to always be distributed in a controlled circulation manner (they’re given away for free, in other words, just like Vice) and can usually be found in the lobbies of trendy clubs, bars, restaurants, or clothing stores with a teen demographic. The content generally tends to cover those very same things – dance clubs, local DJs, party culture.

Living Proof, on the other hand, is designed to be slightly larger than the average club mag — it just barely fit into the back pocket of my jeans. And surprisingly enough, it also seems to have a fairly healthy sense of humor. That’s to say nothing of the design, which is absolutely knock-down fantastic. Yet editorially speaking, I’m not quite sure these guys have stumbled upon their niche just yet. Take a quick look at the website, for instance, and you’ll see they describe themselves as an arts-music-culture-lifestyle publication. But the staffers and writers themselves appear to be heavily into hip-hop culture, as well as so-called alternative sports like snowboarding. Which is good to some degree, because that also means they have a lot of potential material to work with in future issues.

This certainly isn’t a perfect publication just yet, although it does have quite a lot on the ball. I would definitely recommend picking up a copy if you happen to live within the magazine’s distribution range. Click here to see if you’re in luck.

Microcosm Publishing and the 2007 Philly Zine Fest

I’ve been in Philadelphia for just about a week now, and to be honest, I’m a little disappointed with the relatively small number of independent publications I’ve discovered during my time here.

Last weekend I went hunting for odd and unusual publications at the annual Philly Zine Fest, which this year was part of a citywide literary celebration known as the 215 Festival. Apparently the Philly Zine Fest has been happening for a number of years now, but as the event’s organizer explained to me, his former partner — who in the past had been responsible for inviting most of the publishers and setting up the majority of the workshops – was out of town and busy attending law school. In other words, this year’s fest wasn’t too hot. There were no workshops to speak of, and only a handful of zine publishers selling their creations. As far as I could tell, nearly every publisher was local, and that’s never a sign of a healthy event.

I did manage to meet a guy by the name of Steven, however, who had traveled all the way from Bloomington, Indiana, to sell the books and zines of a wonderfully creative company known as Microcosm Publishing. MP was formerly based in Portland, Ore., and if their name rings a bell, that’s probably because you’ve seen a copy of Stolen Sharpie Revolution, Microcosm’s somewhat legendary how-to-make-a-zine book that for years now has been a consistent best-seller in the self-publishing scene.   

Anyway, Steven was standing behind a table that was certainly the largest in the room, and it was piled high with literally dozens of great titles. I picked up the Zinester’s Guide to Portland ($4), which is actually a pocket-sized, perfect-bound paperback; Making Stuff and Doing Things: A Collection of DIY Guides to Doing Just About Everything! ($10); and Do-It-Yourself Screenprinting ($9), a trade paperback that compiles the first three issues of the zine of the same name. Quite a haul!

I can’t possibly recommend Microcosm Publishing enough – assuming you’re the type of person who’s interested in mail art, silkscreening, cheap travel, squatting, Dumpster diving, veganism, freeganism, lo-fi culture … that sort of thing. The company distributes a fantastic (and free) 16-page illustrated catalog, which I’m sure anyone can request online. Visit these creative folks at www.microcosmpublishing.com, and look out for their logo — a bicycle gear with a heart in the middle (see the image at the top of this post) – the next time you visit a decent magazine shop or independent book store.

We’ll be back soon …

By now, any of you who read this blog regularly have no doubt noticed that I haven’t posted in quite some time, so I figured I’d put up a brief letter of explanation. First of all, by no means have I quit blogging – I’m actually right in the middle of a city-to-city move. I’m sure any of you who’ve relocated from one big town to another can understand how difficult and time-consuming that sort of thing can be. I started packing two days before picking up my rental truck, for instance, and literally did not quit working until just about everything I owned was behind lock and key in storage. There wasn’t much time left over for blogging during those busy days, in other words.

I’m now in the process of getting settled, and I imagine I’ll be hooked up with wireless Internet access before too long. For the time being, though, I’m working at the corner coffee shop. No problem there, except that the place closes at 7 p.m. every night of the week. I suppose that’s late enough for most people, but I’ve always been a bit of a night owl – my creativity seems to intensify whenever the sun goes down. No idea why.   

Anyway, that’s my explanation. I’ll do my best to get back on track this week. Tomorrow, in fact, I’ll be working from a desk in Philadelphia’s Independents Hall, so chances are good I’ll have time to bang out a post or two then. Thanks for keeping in touch.