Online travel blogs and podcasts, which travellers produce on the move and upload on to the internet in the cyber cafes they visit during their journeys, are attracting audiences of thousands, and thanks to their success, small, independent publishing houses are now turning these amateur works into books.
'Travellers have always kept diaries and scrapbooks of their trips to share with friends and family and to remind them of their adventures. But the web has allowed these to reach a much wider audience, through blogs, podcasts and photo websites,' says Paul Carr, co-founder of ground-breaking publishing house The Friday Project, which specialises in web-to-print publishing. He has seen an increase in people approaching him with their travel blogs and is cashing in on their popularity by turning them into commercial travel books. The company recently published Le Cool: A Weird and Wonderful Guide to Barcelona, which started life as an email newsletter, and is converting tuktotheroad.co.uk a blog by two women who travelled from Bangkok to Brighton, into a book.
Another major trend is travellers using Print On Demand (POD) publishing: this allows anyone to upload their book onto a website, which readers then pay to download and print out or receive in book form by post.
Alastair Humphreys, a 26-year-old Scot, published his book Moods of Future Joys, an account of his epic journey cycling round the world through POD, after failing to secure a standard publishing deal. Though he marketed and edited it himself, it's selling well through Amazon and his website.
Even authors without mass-market potential are turning to POD. 'Most travellers use POD to convert their travel account into something that looks like a book, to share with family and friends,' says Moira Allen, editor of advice website writing-world.com.
