As the e-book market starts becoming more mainstream, some electronic titles are beginning to outsell their paper versions. Because of these rapid developments, traditional paper publishers are quickly developing e-versions of their popular publications.
Lonely Planet, one of the biggest names in travel publishing just released their first five e-books to the Apple iBooks store. Their Discover guides are available for Great Britain, Italy, Spain, France and Ireland. Unlike some static e-books, the Lonely Planet Discover guides have been completely recreated with a variety of interactive features. The guides offer over 3000 hyperlinks, detailed maps, bookmark, note and highlight options as well as hundreds of images.
Of course, you’ll need an iPad to enjoy the guide, and walking down the streets of Paris while staring at your iPad may not be the best idea, but it should make pre-planning and planning from your hotel room much easier. Best of all, because the content is stored locally, you won’t burn through expensive international cellular data or WiFi to access information.
I’ve taken their guide for a spin, and feel that it is pretty safe to say that this is the future of the travel guide. The Discover Guides can be found in the Apple iBooks store accessible on your device.