I was happy to see the long-awaited new edition of Lonely Planet’s Myanmar guidebook finally get published. I saw a copy in the Siam Paragon branch of Kinokuniya last week and bought one. After a dozen trips to Myanmar I certainly don’t need to have another guidebook, but I’m a book junkie and just couldn’t resist. Besides, it’s been four years since the last edition, so I’m sure there are updated listings for restaurants and hotels in various cities, some of which may be new even to an intrepid street explorer like me. As I was browsing through the book the first night, I saw three references — all within the first 27 pages — to River of Lost Footsteps the acclaimed book by Thant Myint-U. The only problem was that LP misspelled the author’s name — not once but twice! They list it as “Thant Nyint U” two times before getting it right the third time around. After dealing with my own multiple rounds of spell checking and fact checking for a travel book last year, I know how tedious the process can be. You do your best, but sometimes mistakes still make it into print. I can’t blame LP, it happens to everyone, but it was sort of fun to see the “big guys” make a boo-boo too.

We do a brisk business in secondhand guidebooks at my bookshop. There is a constant parade of tourists coming in to sell their dog-eared books, or soon-to-be-travelers wanting to buy a book to help them plan a trip. We have to be careful, of course, when buying secondhand editions. The date of publication is critically important: not many travelers want to use a guidebook that was published in 1998. And yet we have customers bringing us old editions like that almost every week. Bootlegs are another issue: in many countries around Southeast Asia, photocopied versions of guidebooks are common. I avoid these at all costs. Condition of the book is also a factor; most people don’t want to buy a really ragged book or read notes that another tourist scribbled into the margins of the book … or have to turn pages (if they haven’t been ripped out) that are stained by food, blood, or some other mysterious substance.

I’ve noticed another thing about many people who sell their old guidebooks; they are ruthlessly demanding! For some reason, the guidebook sellers are much, much pickier about money than customers selling paperback novels or other types of books. Granted, most guidebooks are expensive when purchased new, but by the time they get to my shop, we are selling them for about half the price of new copies. And what I pay someone walking in off the street is going to be less then half of what I plan to sell the book for in my shop. I’m in business and have to make profit on the item, right? But many people who want to unload their guidebooks act shocked when my offer isn’t as high as what they expected. In those cases, I just shrug my shoulders and suggest that they try another shop.

Here’s a new idea for the Tourism Authority of Thailand; start selling tours of hotel rooms where foreigner tourists — famous and otherwise — have died. Tourism may be down this year, but the fatalities are climbing!