Podcast
How I Built This with Guy Raz
The hosts discussed the book as the humble beginnings of Lonely Planet, noting that it was a simple, home‑produced paperback that surprisingly sold a thousand copies in a single Singapore order, giving the company a major boost. Maureen and Tony Wheeler described printing it on their kitchen table and using a basement printer, while Guy Raz highlighted its brief 96‑page format and low price. The episode portrayed the title as a pivotal, successful launch for the brand.
Episode: Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler (2017)
It was their second travel guide, and it was a major success, with a large Singaporean bookstore purchasing a thousand copies in a single order. It gave the company a big boost and propelled them forward.
He listened to my spiel and then I looked at my dummy of the book. I saw him writing Southeast Asia on a shoestring on the order form and then write some number down and he spun the order around and pushed it across the desk to me and he bought a thousand copies.
Episode: Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler
It was their first book, a very basic and simple paperback, that was produced and printed at home. It was a concise guide covering all the countries they traveled through in Asia.
I was reading through your first guidebook, The Pamphlet And there are some pretty different things in there It tells you where you can find marijuana Isn't it not hard to find it?
It was 96 pages It sold for $1.80 And it covered all the countries you went through? All of Asia in 96 pages Very brief
We had it printed but it was a very basic little book It was actually done it really was done on our kitchen table because actually we only had a kitchen kitchen and a bedroom
And then you took it to a printer and you ran off a bunch of copies of it We found a little... I mean, we didn't go to a big commercial printer it was a guy who had this printing in the basement under his apartment and he printed them for us but we just printed the pages we actually folded them and put them together and as Maureen said, stapled them and trimmed the edges of the guillotine So it was really a home produced book