Guidebook publishers emerge from 2020 with new approaches to travel By Daniel Lefferts | Jul 23, 2021 Publishing involves a high degree of fortune telling: what will hook readers, in what form, and when? These questions, already daunting, are further complicated by the stubborn fact of production. You can identify a potential market, but by the time the book has been written, edited, and bound, will that market still exist? For travel publishers, 2020 brought many a devastating no. How many American readers, in spring of last year, wanted to pick up a guide to Belize? This year brings more optimism. Vaccines are widely available, at least in some parts of the world, and travel restrictions continue to lift, even as the delta variant poses a new menace. But amid vacillating case numbers and mercurial regulations, travel publishers are again having to gamble. That may explain why presses large and small are playing it safe, and perhaps adjusting to a long-term shift in travel appetites. For these publishers,