Tall tales

IN A COOL , air-conditioned room situated on a blazing hot strip of Palo Alto, James O'Reilly is being philosophical. As publisher of Traveler's Tales, the press that cranks out, among other things, those nifty anthologies of true stories centered around specific countries (i.e., Greece, Italy, Thailand), waxing philosophic suits him. The man traffics in those once-in-a-lifetime stories adventurous travelers return from their trips with – tales of hitchhiking women who might be the reincarnation of the Hawaiian volcano goddess, Pele; of visits to a West African jungle so sacred that hikers are required to visit a witch doctor for evil-abatement before setting off; of a sect of radical Thai monks who have turned their monastery into the ultimate rehab – and having your head continuously flooded with such tales creates a certain, ever-widening mindset. "The problem I see with our culture is everyone is fed this quasi-culture on television and through the Internet with a shovel," he remarks. "People don't realize that they need to be going out and weaving the tapestry of their own life. And writing it down, if only for their memory in 10 or 20 years. We're trying to do our bit to keep people interested in the written word, in travel, in stories."

He's doing a heck of a job. Since 1993 Traveler's Tales has been cranking out an average of 10 books a year, mostly anthologies stuffed with the sort of travel stories you don't find in Fodor's or in the glossy pages of a Condé Nast vacation rag. The press grew out of a column O'Reilly wrote with friend, collaborator, and future Traveler's Tales' copublisher Larry Habegger.

"We started a travel security column called 'World Travel Watch,' in 1985," he recalls. "We're still doing it, it's in a number of papers around the country, basically covering strikes, war zones, disease outbreaks, stuff like that. That led us to doing all kinds of travel writing for newspapers and magazines."

One fan of the duo's travel narratives was O'Reilly's brother, tech publisher Tim O'Reilly ("Any geek worth his salt knows his press.") Only, brother Tim much preferred the more colorful adventures he spoke of to the glitzed-out versions the magazines published.

"He was just interested in the stuff he'd hear from Larry and me," James says of his brother, who egged the pair into publishing and remains a silent partner in Traveler's Tales. "He said, 'You tell me much more lurid stories then you write about.' Newspapers and magazines so want to sanitize things, make it something that's commercial. We've always loved the travel stories that are off the wall."

Traveler's Tales' first effort was the award-winning Thailand, a collection of stories that aims to get deep under the skin of the only country in Southeast Asia never to be colonized. With contributions by travel writers such as Pico Iyer and Simon Winchester, the debut was honored with a prestigious Lowell Thomas award for Best Travel Book, the start of an awards-laden publishing run: Many Traveler's Tales books have gone on to win awards from this "Pulitzer of travel writing."

"But awards don't pay the rent," James says with the sort of grim chuckle common to independent publishers. "One thing we learned quite quickly is there is no correlation between travelers and travelers who read. You'd think people going someplace they'd never been before would want to do a lot of reading up."

Traveler's Tales cranked onward despite this crappy revelation, accumulating awards and branching out into story collections bound not by geography but by themes such as spirituality, humor, and gender.

"We've been very successful with publishing women's travel," James says. "There's women's spiritual travel – kind of a mouthful. And the women's books morphed into women's humor books. We were astonished. These books, which are really goofy, have done better than anything."

The series he refers to is a duo of books (soon to be a trio) edited by Jennifer L. Leo. The first volume, Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures: Funny Women Write from the Road, features Anne Lamott learning to love her ass in Oaxaca, Ellen Degeneres freaking out nuns with an in-flight anxiety meltdown, and Sandra Tsing Loh vacationing on "that topless little vixen of an island," Tahiti, where "there is nothing to do, finally, but be fat."

"Jennifer is wonderful," James says. "She just loves doing wacky marketing things. For Sand she took an old car and painted it pink and drove it around. She called it the BraMobile." In between covering the World Series of Poker, Leo whipped out the follow-up anthology, Whose Panties Are These?; the third installment, The Thong Also Rises, is forthcoming.

"Our little motto is, 'The power of a good story,' " says James. "Whether someone tells you a good story or you read one, the power of a good story to get you off your butt is extraordinary."