Producing a new edition of a guidebook happens in seemingly 101 stages, many of which had not even occurred to me. Since October last year, Max and I (with a little help from our Russian-speaking friends) have been updating Bradt's travel guides to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan so that 2nd editions of each book can be published in November this year. Kazakhstan is the first to go to press and so the first edition we've seen through from start to finish.
Paul Brummell, Britain's former Ambassador to Kazakhstan, wrote Bradt's original guide to Kazakhstan in 2008. It is a hefty tome (not surprisingly given that Kazakhstan is the same size as western Europe) and densely filled with detail, but Brummell's writing style is fluid and entertaining. The historical and cultural stories, as well as Brummell's own anecdotes of his travels, make for a pleasurable read.
The downside of so much detail is that when it comes to updating the book there are literally thousands of facts to check. Every bus station, hotel, shopping mall and travel agent needs to be called, not to mention the endless museums, cafes and nightclubs. Not all of these companies have phones, and those that do have often changed their numbers or simply gone out of business. During this research stage you feel as much like Sherlock Holmes or a character in CSI as a writer.
In some cases there is no alternative but to turn up on the doorstep to find out if XYZ still exists. This is particularly useful with hotels and restaurants as you can do a quality check at the same time. Pitching up in town is also advantageous as you can check out any new places that have sprung up since the previous edition was published: restaurants, cafes and bars in particular seem to pop up and down like rabbits in a burrow.
Once the facts are checked and organised (we write the info up into Excel so it is all in one place), it's time to edit the original manuscript. Fortunately these days everything is digital, which speeds this part of the process up no end. We remove everything that has gone, change what needs to be changed, and add in the new entries. In the case of the Kazakhstan guide there was also some entirely new content: new sections on education and photography, a map of Turkestan, and added info on driving into/out of and across Kazakhstan.The manuscript is edited as a Word file, and all the changes are tracked so the project manager can see what's going on.
When we sent off the manuscript , we breathed a huge sigh of relief: the heavy lift on the edition was done. The project manager checks the manuscript, emails over any questions or other matters raised during the proof reading for correction, and we respond by email. That's all pretty straight forward, and the book can then be typeset. The difficult bits come next.
Maps. Every decent size town mentioned in the Kazakh guide has a map which, as well as giving the major street names, shows the location of every company and site mentioned in the guide. Removing defunct companies from the map is relatively straightforward: you just cross them off. Adding new sites in is a little more problematic. In some respects, the Soviet Union was great at cartography. The topographical maps produced, and those showing mineral deposits, are exceptionally detailed and still great resources today. Sadly, this attention to detail doesn't continue to town plans. Buildings are often not actually located on the street mentioned in their address, and its common for more than one name (usually Soviet and post-Soviet choices) to refer to the same physical street. Plotting an address accurately on a map without out actually walking the street is nigh on impossible, and Google Maps only goes part of the way to clarifying the issue.
Armed with different colour biros, Tipex and multiple copies of the same maps, we slowly plotted, checked, re-plotted and re-checked the position of every new site. It was painstaking. Our humble drawings, hopefully sufficiently clear in their final draft, were dispatched to Bradt's cartographer to be rendered in their house style. We await the final result.
Although companies cannot pay for inclusion in the core text of Bradt's travel guides, and certainly cannot pay for a more favourable review, there are a few pages at the end of each guide given over to paid advertisers. This is usually a national airline and one or two high-end hotels that are looking to increase their exposure to potential customers. We made ourselves a 'hit-list' of potential advertisers and, via phone, email, fax and, on occasions, meetings in person, attempted to reel them in. Now I know we are in a recession, but there are a limited number of places where you can actually advertise companies in Kazakhstan, and the advertising rates are minute compared to those in magazines. The level of lethargy we met with was outstanding, and even once companies had decided to advertise, getting them to hand over their artwork at the correct spec was like pulling teeth. Fortunately Max had rather more patience in this area than I did.
The final job on the update list (with the exception of choosing pictures) was to take the final, type-set PDF of the text and to cross-reference and index the text. Even with the invaluable 'Find' option in Word and Adobe, this tasks seems to take forever, not helped by the fact it is incredibly dull. It is not enough simply to list in the index every occurrence of the name "Dostoevsky" or the town "Aktobe": the vast majority of the listings are simply street names or throw-away references. It is necessary to trawl through each of these individually, pulling out for the index only those which add to the reader's understanding of the topic or enable them to find a specific piece of information. Even with Amy Winehouse blaring in the background, the task is mind-numbing.
Our tasks complete, Bradt is doing their final checks and assembling the colour photos that are one of the most popular highlights in any guidebook. Humans are very visual creatures and, no matter how eloquent the prose, a good selection of pictures will always swing your choice of where to go. We're excited to see the finished product but, like readers everywhere, will be waiting until Nov. 20th to see our book in print.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kazakhstan-Bradt-Travel-Guides-Brummell/dp/1841623695/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1311685580&sr=8-2
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