Finding the fun outside the AI comfort zone

I used to write a monthly column in a magazine. Some were good, some rushed, and others, after about three years, were uninspired and derivative. Occasionally, something cool would happen and I’d be able to write a lovely, flowing piece worthy of the people expected to read it. I apologise for the shit ones.

After three years, my financial circumstances changed on account of getting unmarried, and I could no longer justify the time I spent on the column for the amount I got paid (which was zero). Some promises were made, but no remuneration was forthcoming, and I have to confess I resorted to drafting the column using AI before editing it into what I like to call ‘a poor excuse for original commentary on what folk really wanted from a monthly magazine’.

The magazine folded (or went online, as the phrase goes), and I simply forgot to send any more writing in.

The natural cycle of dying and fertilising

I’d like to think my AI-drafted writing was worthless, and in turn the magazine became worthless; in the natural cycle of things, the old and tired died, but their memory was there to fertilise the new. My running appears to have met a similar fate, and as it dies, I hope it can fertilise a new era of adventuring for me, be it hillwalking, naturing (my new verb: it involves clothes and binoculars, in case you are wondering), or probably rock-catting about the place.

We’re told AI can’t do new. We know it makes mistakes, we know it has a gender bias (good news for men, though), and just as it killed the magazine, it will surely kill all of us. Not because it unleashes a swarm of deadly nanobots, but because it’ll just bore us to death. Nothing new will happen. There will never be another The Blair Witch Project, another Cider with Rosie, or another The Hay Wain.

Stay with me here. All three are cultural phenomena:

• The cool book about the end of a rural lifestyle (Cider with Rosie)
• The painting taking the viewer back to a simple, agrarian scene (The Hay Wain)
• Those kids lost in the Black Hills of Maryland (The Blair Witch Project) 

All three explore the psychology of landscape and manipulate the audience’s emotions with it.

John Constable paints the beautiful dream of the pastoral; Laurie Lee walks you through its reality; and The Blair Witch Project forces you to face what happens when you get lost in it. Our book The Bond is a kind of Blair Witch Project for mountaineers.

AI, the conformity of it and the homogeneity of it, suppresses that and leaves you comfortable. As we know, it is outside the comfort zone that the fun happens.

The alarming reality of the 9% fall

My point? I read there has been a 9% fall in book sales in the greater outdoor and travel market so far this year (with inflation in the book production world running at close to 10%). This is quite an alarming figure, and it may well explain why many publishers are looking to sell up.

There are also further pressures: 

• The EU Wall: a raft of new EU legislation makes it all but impossible for us to sell books directly into Europe now; indeed, we suspended the service a month ago

• Rising Surcharges: printing costs have gone up again as raw material prices increase, and there is now a 4% surcharge on all orders to offset the effects of the pointless war Trump is waging against whoever he wants to

What of this 9% fall in sales? What actually is that? It is your humble guidebook, the city guide, the walking guide, the things-to-do-at-the-weekend guide. Navigation apps, chatbots and AI tools all serve up information that is often better, not just seemingly so, more up-to-date and more accurate than a guidebook can provide. Imagine buying a phrasebook, an A–Z street atlas, or a map of Snowdon when you have literally millions of them on that cool-looking, sexy wafer of tech you just checked your Instagram on two minutes ago.

Moving from turn-by-turn to true adventure

Like the magazine, all things have to die. Maybe the traditional guidebook has had its day? We can accept that a GPX file and a digital map on your smartwatch are just so much better for navigating than a set of turn-by-turn directions, but we should use the demise of these formats to inspire a new generation, a new era for publishers.

People will get bored of not having fun. If publishers get it right, they can inspire, challenge and manipulate their audience’s emotions with their work. But only if they have the time, vision and resources to seek that work out. We were recently challenged as to why we had gone to Kickstarter to fund our forthcoming book Spine, well it is simple, that is a book about a niche event, in a niche sport that fewer than 100 people a year complete. To us it is a natural book to do, something we want to do, and something we think is important to do. But it ain't Jamie Oliver and there isn’t very much cosy crime or romantasy about it. Trust me, this is edgy publishing.

Alfred Wainwright’s books still sell because they tell you what it is like to be in the Lakeland Fells and challenge you to climb them. I like to think of these as adventure guides, much like our book Running Challenges. Yes, they tell you how to do the route, even give you a GPX file, but they also tell you what it is like to do it. These are narrative guides, just like Wainwright’s Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. The author is accompanying you on the adventure.

The new era of lived experiences

Publishers need authors who are able to take the reader with them into the great outdoors. Authors who can:

• Hay Wain them, in the case of Mick Fowler and his new book Eternal Alpinist
• Cider with Rosie them, in the case of Lindsey Cole and Siobhan Daniels and their respective books, Swimming with Strangers and Retire & Refire
• Give them the full Blair Witch Project treatment, which comes from what has been one of my favourite books of my entire career: Jamie Doward’s And So I Run

I should say I’m not seeking to claim that the titles I have commissioned and put my company’s money behind have anything like the cultural influence of John Constable, Laurie Lee, or Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. But I am saying they are new. They have a different take on the norm. They relate lived experiences.

• Mick Fowler survived bouts of cancer and, at 68, went to climb remote mountains, with uncertain outcomes, in the world’s greater ranges
• Siobhan Daniels found freedom in retirement, proving herself more than capable of meeting challenges
• Lindsey Cole swam with strangers in order to find herself
• Jamie Doward, in And So I Run, ran through the Maryland woods of his mind to eventually free himself from the demons he found there.

So publishing can be reborn, and it can grow into something new, challenging and inspiring for a new generation of readers, readers who know exactly where the fun is.

Hopefully you can continue on with us as we publish new stories, and tell of new experiences and find you new challenges in the adventure world around you this autumn and beyond.

Thanks as always for the support.