Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [63]
A: The biggest difference is that in 1967-68, Turkey was largely isolated from the rest of the world. The Turkish lira was a nonconvertible currency, so it was very difficult for Turks to travel abroad. The Turkish economy was relatively closed, and a lot of it government-run. There was very little foreign tourism. Turks had little firsthand information about other countries, and other countries had very little firsthand or accurate information about Turkey. Today, Turkish travelers are everywhere in the world, and Turkey is one of the world’s top ten travel destinations. The provincialism of the late 1960s is long gone.
Q: After your Peace Corps stint, what made you decide to write a guidebook, and how did you define your audience and decide what they needed from a guidebook?
A: I wrote my first guidebook, Turkey on $5 a Day (Frommer’s), while I was still in the Peace Corps. It was a Peace Corps project, and one of Peace Corps Turkey’s most successful ones.
After a few months in Turkey I realized that Americans knew virtually nothing about the country, and most of what they thought they knew was wrong. They thought Turkey still had a sultan with harems, and that Turks were Arabs, and their country a sandy desert. They thought it was a dictatorship and about to “go Communist,” none of which was true. American tourists—the bulk of the world’s travelers at that time—happily went to Greece and Israel, but passed right over Turkey. I thought this was a pity because Turkey had so much to offer. I hoped that a guidebook in a major series would help to convince people to explore this marvelous country. I calculated that Turkey on $5 a Day helped several hundred thousand travelers discover Turkey. My later Lonely Planet guide has now sold well over a half million copies in several languages and has become the all-time best-selling guide to the destination.
Q: What was it about guidebook writing that made you decide to quit and begin a life as a Web site master?
A: Guidebook authorship was extraordinarily rewarding. To see your work in print, to receive letters from travelers saying it has helped them to explore a new and different place, to meet travelers on the road who thank you for your help—it’s a wonderful feeling. But it’s also very demanding work, physically, emotionally, and financially. In the 1980s and 1990s I made a good living at it, but by the late 1990s the industry was changing. The work was ever more demanding, there was ever more competition for readers, legal exposure was rising and compensation falling. When the Internet came along, it was a no-brainer: a medium through which I could publish my work immediately, worldwide, forever, for very little cost! I experimented with online delivery of travel information in the mid-1990s, and moved all my efforts to the Web early in the new millennium. I taught myself HTML, how to develop Web sites in Dreamweaver, and other necessary skills so that I could be an online publisher as well as a writer and photographer.
Q: What are some of the most commonly asked questions about Turkey and Istanbul that you receive?
A: The variety of questions is unbelievable, from “How can I ship two hundred tons of steel to Turkey?” to “Are there pigeon-fanciers in Cappadocia?” But in my private consultations with travelers, they mostly want me to help make their itineraries fit together and work right in the limited time they have for travel. So the prime question is always “How do I see all the top sights in the shortest possible time?”
Q: What are some tips or suggestions that you would give to first-time visitors?
A: Most importantly (for any traveler anywhere): “Dump your preconceptions.” As Aldous Huxley said, “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” You will find out for yourself, and you won’t understand unless you let it tell you what it is, rather than you telling it what it should be.
Q: What are some of your favorite