In reply to Matt Smith:
> Considering it's probably the most popular sport climbing destination in the South (IMO) and with the new routing activity going on, I'm surprised it has been over 8 years since the last guide.
The UK guidebook market is not massive so we aren't able to publish short-run guidebooks and continually update them. We basically need to predict a print run in advance and historically we have always aimed for 6 to 8-year print-runs. This makes them much more affordable (since printing per book is cheaper with larger print-runs) and allows us the time to keep all areas in print as best we can.
This does mean that some areas get a bit out of date but we can't afford to put the work into a new edition if we still have loads of copies of the old edition. So we publish to our print runs which occasionally we over-estimate as happened to an extent with Dorset.
In certain areas this doesn't matter so much - trad areas with little in the way of new routes for example. In fast-developing sport climbing areas it does though so we are looking at moving to shorter print-runs but with less radically updated new editions for these areas.
Historically this hasn't really been an option since the photo and map technology we use have moved on so quickly that the crag shots we took on books 8 years ago look pretty rubbish now. So most books have required a full new set of crag shots, which is a full book, and all the extra work that entails. This is becoming less of a problem since the crag photos we are now getting are so good.
The app obviously gives us an opportunity to keep a rolling update going. This is something we want to do but at present, we haven't got the resources to do this across all the books. Authors allocate their effort to an area and if you are putting together a book for the Lake District, then you can't put the time into an update for Dorset. The app is also taking up a lot of development time getting up to speed with the new subscription system across both platforms.
I hope that explains why some books occasionally appear a bit out of date but are still on sale.
Alan
