The Trail Companion

Fall 1999

Trail Center and Wilderness Press Join Efforts

by Darwin Poulos

     In early October the Trail Center and Wilderness Press joined forces to publish and distribute our maps. Why did the Trail Center enter into such an agreement after many years of selling our own maps? The answer lies in changes made at the Trail Center earlier this year. As we announced in the Summer 1999 Trail Companion, the Trail Center went out of the retail map business in June and does not currently have staffed office hours. As part of a resource-saving effort, map distribution was contracted to Pease Press on an interim basis.
     Even though the Trail Center has stopped selling maps, we did not stop producing maps. Unfortunately map production is a costly business (paper costs, cartography costs, printing costs, etc.). In order to insure publication of the two maps currently in preparation - Peninsula Parklands, 3rd Edition and Trail Map of the Central Peninsula - we began to look for "someone" who would be willing to publish and distribute these maps.
     The agreement with Wilderness Press is good for both organizations. Wilderness Press gets three new products and becomes the exclusive distributor for Trail Center products. The Trail Center benefits because we no longer need to spend time on map production issues, but can devote time to creating new maps. Furthermore, the distribution network at Wilderness Press is much larger than that of the Trail Center. This means that more people can see our maps in a much larger market.
     Even though Wilderness Press will publish and distribute our maps, the Trail Center still remains the author. This means that the Trail Center retains the responsibility for accuracy and updates. Wilderness Press is serving as a publisher/distributor for the Trail Center.
     We're looking forward working with Wilderness Press. The agreement between the Trail Center and Wilderness Press is good for both organizations. Wilderness Press gets to market three new products, and the Trail Center gets hard "volunteer earned" map data published without the extra effort needed to publish a map.
     Trail Center maps will appear in the Wilderness Press catalog beginning with the Spring 2000 issue. You can request a catalog or contact them at:

Wilderness Press
1200 5th Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
phone:(510) 558-1666
(800) 443-7227
fax: (510) 558-1696
e-mail: mail@wildernesspress.com