MAYBE YOU'RE AN honest-to-god traveling person, the sort of free spirit who clocks in at the ol' McJob long enough to book a cheap courier ticket to another country, where you roam for a month, sleeping on beaches, making new best pals forever with the people snoring next to you at the hostels, learning about the local ways from the old guy propped beside you at the smoky watering hole down the road. Or maybe you're like me – a procrastinator, a far-away dreamer, someone who trolls the travel section of your local indie bookstore, getting lost for hours in the pages of books detailing the sights and customs of a land you have no actual immediate plans to visit. Either way, you've certainly spent some time sunk in the thick, glossy pages of a Lonely Planet travel guide. Unique in both its approach to travel (encouraging folks to journey with the immersion of a traveler rather then with the consumerism of a tourist) and to readers (irreverent entries encompass a wide range of sensibilities, income brackets, and cultural affiliations), Lonely Planet has been cranking out guidebooks and assorted travel literature for more than 30 years, under the direction of Australian publishers Maureen Wheeler and Tony Wheeler.

"Their intention was not to start a publishing company!" Cindy Cohen says with a laugh. She is the publicity manager for the press's Americas office, located in a warehouse district in Oakland. "They'd gotten married and spent their honeymoon year traveling across Southeast Asia. They ended up back in Australia with 27 cents in their pocket." Fielding bunches of questions from curious would-be fellow travelers, the couple got creative.

"They decided they would write up these little booklets," Cohen continues. "They did all this stuff on their kitchen table – stapling, collating. The goal was to make more money to go on their next trip. There was so much interest! They sold enough to take that next trip."

And many, many more. With an additional office in London plus the mother ship in Melbourne, Lonely Planet has become the largest independent travel publisher. "We are not owned by anybody," Cohen says. "We are distributed by ourselves."

Lonely Planet puts out a variety of series, some that provide cheap ways to hit the road, others for highfalutin five-star types, and still others for business folks who find themselves spending a weekend in a strange city on the company dime. "For the first bit of time, Lonely Planet was known as the backpackers' bible. People thought we were only for backpackers, but that's not true," Cohen says. But if you're a backpacker looking for some salvation, the press's Shoestring series is probably what you want by your bedside.

"Shoestring is dedicated to those who want a longer trip but don't have much money," she says. "We have maybe a half dozen of these now. Two new Shoestring guides are coming out in April – the U.S. and Canada, and Australia and New Zealand. We're really pleased to have those." A quick peek inside Central America on a Shoestring, and I catch a two-week jaunt through Costa Rica budgeted at a mere $15 a day, providing the traveler can skimp on breakfast and booze.

So there's Lonely Planet the press, and then there's Lonely Planet the employer. Workers get a full month's paid vacation, the better to travel and test-drive the merchandise. Cohen attributes this generosity as a benefit of having bosses lacking that dreadful American workaholic work ethic. "In Europe and Asia, there's a different attitude towards taking time," she says.

The distribution warehouse, commanded by Scott Stampfli, contains a special area, fenced off and draped in tie-dyed tapestries, where workers hang out and play music. "As you can see, it's a unique environment," Stampfli says, gesturing around the wide space filled with piles and piles of books, decorated with stuff like a plastic sign reading, "Welcome Enjoy the Show," a big foam hand flipping an eternal bird, and a roll-out basketball net. "You go into most warehouses and people look like automatons shoveling dog food. Here they're happy. Our joke is, you work for Lonely Planet and then you move to a foreign country, go to prison, or go to grad school."

Writers dreaming of an assignment on Moscow's architecture or the beaches of Fiji needn't keep dreaming. Aspiring Lonely Planet scribes are encouraged to submit a writing sample. If your verbiage is up to snuff, you'll be placed in a pool of potential writers and called the next time the press is updating a book and needs someone to snoop around some far-flung corner of our world.

"Lonely Planet is based on encouraging curiosity," Cohen says. "You see people in other parts of the world, and when you meet them, the world becomes a smaller place. You become less inclined to maintain stereotypes. People are more similar then they are different. If our politicians traveled more, they'd see our world is a friendlier place."