Woohoo! Lonely Planet Paris won Guidebook of the Year at the British Travel Press Awards, held in London on November 20. Amid all the unsettling change in the publishing industry these days, this is a great moment to reflect on how many people it really takes to make a book a success.
Now, I love the self-publishing movement – there’s no doubt that it has opened up doors for a lot of people in the past decade – but for the most part, a great book requires much more than just an author and a novel idea. Every time I count the supporting cast on whatever book I happen to be working on, I cringe when I think of my my own backburner self-publishing project (which, of course, would be totally DIY).
For this particular guide, there were upwards of 20 people in production: a commissioning editor, a managing editor, several copyeditors, several proofreaders, a layout designer, several cartographers, and an image researcher, and that’s not even including the sales and marketing folks on the business end of things.
So, hat’s off to the entire team who worked on this great guide behind the scenes. A book wouldn’t be the same without you.