Mock Travel Guide Takes Flight

Among Overlook's fall titles at BEA this year—a spy novel, a self-help book, a coming-of-age tale—one stood out conspicuously. Part Lonely Planet, part the Onion and a smattering of Russian comic Yakov Smirnoff, Molvania: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry (Sept.), is a guide to a fictionalized Eastern European republic.

"You have to do a double take to make sure you didn't open a Rough Guide or a Frommer's," said B&N spokeswoman Carolyn Brown, who confirmed the chain will stock the title at all of its stores.

Molvania began earlier this year as a Web site—www.molvania.com—that attracted more than 65,000 new visitors within a month. As the first in a series of Jetlag Travel guides, the book has already sold 100,000 copies in Australia, and is currently a bestseller in the U.K. Rights have been sold in more than 16 countries. In the U.S., media reception to bootlegged copies has been positive. Time Out called it "magnificently executed"; the Los Angeles Times said it's "a hoot."

With a marketing budget of $40,000 (for an estimated 10-city tour, national ads and co-op), Overlook president and publisher Peter Mayer has only one worry: that bookstores will shelve Molvania in the travel section and not in humor. This may be a legitimate concern: according to Mayer, "A lady at BEA begged for a copy because she said her parents came from Molvania!"Among independent retailers who've expressed interest in Molvania was Vermont's Northshire Center Bookstore. Stan Hynds, adult buyer for the store, left BEA with five advance copies . "At first I wasn't exactly sure where to file them—books have a tendency to get lost in the humor section, and it's not exactly a travel guide." In the end, said Hynds, "I just settled for the counter."