mountainproject.com's impact on guidebooks

red armada wrote:I'd be interested in the opinion of MP users on the following "hypothetical" scenario: A self-contained remote non-US climbing area evolves over twenty years with a mix of long and short trad routes, sport, bouldering and DWS up to 5.12d'ish. 90% of the routes are put up by a short list of about five climbers. At a certain point momentum builds for a print guidebook. One is produced with a limited print run by a first-time publisher with the usual non-commercial business model (ie guaranteed losses). In addition to selected stuff in the book a definitive list of everything else climbed in the area, regardless of worth is archived on the publishers web site. Everyone is pretty happy with the result and most of the small community of climbers buy a copy at an early stage but one year on there are still plenty to sell. Into the community sails a young and inexperienced climber of no great talent ( indeed some frankly weird gumby tendencies like tackling a three bolt 5.9 sport route with a full trad rack - and having to sit on every bolt). Unknown to the community it turns out that he has a strong sense of mission (or other unknown agenda ...) and sits night after night in front of his computer transcribing a couple of hundred routes from the book, almost none of which he has done, onto Mountain Project ... replicating not only route names and grades but the exact structure of the book by chapter/ area/ cliff/ sector and adding detail only knowable from reading the book itself. On discovering this the guidebook writer, distributor and main new route activists are spitting blood ... Fair? Unfair? What do you think?

The conduct of this matter from the gentleman above on other forums are the following:

uaeclimbing.com/forum/viewt…

facebook.com/#!/group.php?g…

As an absolutely inexperienced climber, who has been living in the UAE for 5 years and have never heard of the possibility, nor did I ever come across the guidebook for UAE climbing - I am glad that someone has pointed me to the direction of THE guidebook written by Red Armada and the updates(www.redarmadapublishing.com/updates.php) that have been also posted by Brian Coones on MP.com on numerous occasions.

There is a great number of climbing sites within the UAE that has not been known by outsiders - neither has been any activity coming out of this end of the world on MP.com before Brian Coones started to talk about the area and The Guidebook; and praised and thanked all those who have contributed to such material. According to what I have been reading, he has given a great amount of recognition and appreciation to Red Armada and the others responsible for climbing here, see this link to read some of the recognition he has written.

mountainproject.com/v/inter…

I do not see how an open and free marketing of your product on an international website can either damage your reputation or have a possible loss of income of the increase of sales of Red Armada's guidebook. As I see it, the publicity is only to Red Armada's benefit, not Brian's.

People living in and outside of the UAE are now aware of the fact that there is an available/legitimate source of information for climbing enthusiasts. And isn't that what the book has been written for?

The guy who politely requested to not post a topo is foolish and leaving money on the table.

Look at Supertopo. There is plenty of beta flying back and forth but none of it supplants the guidebook info. If anything MP will (and probably already has) exerted pressure to improve the entire guidebook. There will be additional narrative (descriptions of the first ascent and other interesting history perhaps). There will be constant upgrading of info and correction of errors. It will continue as an iterative process. One thing that strikes me as innovative and very positive is that if you buy a Supertopo guidebook on-line, future updates are either free of greatly reduced in price. This reduces the overhead and helps create a loyal customer -- a win/win!

It's not an either/or proposition.

2 cents

RRG guidebook is all online on a website I believe is run by the author and most people still couldn't wait for the 3rd edition to roll off the presses. Its also available as an Iphone app. I'd be interested to see how the sales of the Iphone app have impacted the paper copy sales. (I have them both)

Last Spring I made a trip to Tucson and e-mailed Eric to see if I could get any updates. He said sure and to e-mail him around when I was going. Then I bought the older copy of STL2 anyway and will buy STL3 as soon as it comes out. For the same trip I printed out what I found on MP for CS, punched and bound it in a volume. While doing this and while climbing I kept thinking "wouldn't it be great if there was a guidebook for this area". If I were to factor in paper ink and binding, plus time, $40 for the guidebook would have been a bargin.

The people who aren't going to buy a guidebook aren't going to print the stuff out either. They will just show up at the cliff and ask to "take a look" at someone else's. MP is a great resource but will never replace guidebooks.

I was going to publish a book series once. It was going to be a twelve-part series, with the first book covering hard-hitting topics like:

Which rope should I get?
What are the best shoes?
What knot should I use to combine two ropes to rap with?

Just to keep things interesting I was going to intersperse comments throughout the book about how I misspelled words or argue semantics completely unrelated to the topic at hand. The other eleven books were going to cover the exact same topics, but I'd publish them about 1 month apart incase there were any major engineering developments during that time. Just before we were going to go to press my editor called me up and told me that Mountain Project and Rockclimbing.com already cover this exact information. Now I'm working on a book where a bunch of washed up has-beens talk about the 'good ole days' and how gyms have ruined climbing.

Supertopo already has that covered.

post them. who is to say that the guidebook author has rights to publish the info? ever been to an intersection with four gas stations?

Look, I appreciate all the hard work that goes into a guidebook, and I can appreciate the karma that comes from allowing the person who put in that hard work to benefit, but that doesn't even stop people from publishing other guidebooks. Red Rocks, the 'Gunks, Yosemite have how many books?

I post route info on my website. There's no way, for instance, that Dick Williams is sweating bullets over my info. His guidebook is way more user friendly and has way more routes. I can never match his muscle in that regard, but I also like posting the info that I do have and I have heard people say it is helpful. I offer it for free because I don't expect anything in return (I haven't put in the work to say I should earn money), but I never think my info is going to be better than his.

Also, I do check MP and RC.com a lot when I'm researching specific routes, but I always want to look at the best local guidebook, too, so I have never, that I can remember, gone exclusively off of a website's info.

Hey could you not publish your guide book because I'm planning on publishing a guide book for that area and it would hurt my sales.

Monomaniac wrote:Red, I sent you a Private Message about this matter. Please respond and I will help you address it. Thanks, Mark

I'd just like to publically thank Mark and Andy for addressing the issues I have raised.

FWIW my quick thoughts on this general topic:
- copyright issues in climbing info are not well established legally, as there is limited precedent (this is a good thing: it means climbers haven't frequently been suing other climbers)
- ethical issues are however usually pretty clear ...
- MP.com is served best by information being contributed by climbers who have actually spent time in the area and have done good-style ascents of routes, not fantasist gumbies
- print guidebook writers should anticipate and be resigned to information leaking online over time but should equally feel entitled to question any pure plagiarism

Reni wrote:People living in and outside of the UAE are now aware of the fact that there is an available/legitimate source of information for climbing enthusiasts. And isn't that what the book has been written for?

Reni: many people have already tried to correct you on this in various places, but it seems you won't listen ...

The incremental publicity that your boyfriend's plagiarism has generated is neither welcome nor needed. There has been plenty of publicity about climbing in the UAE/ Oman region, on the web, in the press and in print climbing magazines for many years. A really simple example - "Climbing" magazine, one of the top magazines in the US where most MP users are based, specifically referenced my book in an Oman article in its last edition. Jebel Misht in Oman has featured several times in the respected "Alpinist" magazine. The UK climbing press has been carrying articles about the region since the mid-90s. Within the UAE itself, there's a multi-page interview with me about the guidebook in "Time Out Adventure" that you'll see in almost any Dubai bookshop. The ubiquitous "Dubai Explorer" book owned by almost every expat resident also points people to climbing. Googling UAE+Climbing or Oman+Climbing brings up many useful links.

You continue to extrapolate from the unremarkable fact that you knew nothing about climbing until your boyfriend introduced you, to draw an incorrect generalised conclusion.

Technology is cool but literature is cooler.

I own several guidebooks, now long out of print, that I cherish as wonderful works of literature. Informative yes - but believe it or not, a darn good read even though I live far far away from those places that I once climbed.

I would encourage people to post information that they know is correct. I would encourage guidebook writers to create enduring guides, because I can mostly guarantee that these old books will be relevant for as long as the crags stand.

Ryan Kelly wrote:I was going to publish a book series once. It was going to be a twelve-part series, with the first book covering hard-hitting topics like: Which rope should I get? What are the best shoes? What knot should I use to combine two ropes to rap with? Just to keep things interesting I was going to intersperse comments throughout the book about how I misspelled words or argue semantics completely unrelated to the topic at hand. The other eleven books were going to cover the exact same topics, but I'd publish them about 1 month apart incase there were any major engineering developments during that time. Just before we were going to go to press my editor called me up and told me that Mountain Project and Rockclimbing.com already cover this exact information. Now I'm working on a book where a bunch of washed up has-beens talk about the 'good ole days' and how gyms have ruined climbing.

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