Motionsickness Interview

December 1st, 2006 | By Larry Habegger | No Comments »

Larry Habegger, executive editor of Travelers’ Tales Books, publisher of the popular line of travel narrative collections, answered email questions from Motionsickness editor Steve Wilson.

Motionsickness: Whose idea was it to go into the travel publishing business and why did you decide to publish collections of narratives instead of say, guidebooks?

Larry: The idea really came from Tim [co-founder James O’Reilly’s brother] and James looking for ways to work together, and for James and me to move beyond the freelance scramble. Tim was very successful as a technical book publisher, and James and I were traveling a lot and writing about it. Tim wanted to have some of the fun we were having, and we, of course, wanted some of the financial success Tim had found. We all wanted to give travelers/readers more useful information than could be generally found in the publishing industry, whether it be books, magazines, or newspapers, and we felt that the best way to accomplish this was through stories, real stories of real people and the extraordinary things that happened to them in their travels. We’ve always felt that information is communicated far more effectively through stories. You connect with them, team lessons, and absorb information in ways that you simply can’t when it’s obtained from practical sources. Apart from this belief that nothing like Travelers’ Tales existed, that what readers needed was a series of books of true stories by travelers, we didn’t want to enter an already crowded field and go head-to-head with other guidebook publishers. Our concept was a very different kind of travel book, one that would create and fill its own niche.

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