MapQuest to Search for Book Sales

by Staff, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 5/31/2005

With more and more book publishers developing products for the Internet, it seems fair that a company best known for its Web services is preparing to publish print products. MapQuest, the popular online map site, has formed MapQuest Publishing, which will publish road atlases, specialty travel guides and street maps beginning this summer.

MapQuest spokesperson Brian Hoyt explained that since MapQuest "is doing all we can on the Web," the company has been looking for ways to diversify its business. MapQuest, which adopted is current name in 1999, began as a cartographic services division of R.R. Donnelley that became a supplier of custom maps to reference, travel, textbook, and directory publishers. Even as the company moved more of its business to the Internet it continued to provide custom publications for such clients as National Geographic and Micheline Travel Publications. "We want to get beyond our private label business," Hoyt says.

The company's first list will feature The MapQuest Road Atlas plus a series of directories produced as bookazines. Walter Doyle is heading up the publishing unit from MapQuest's Mountville, Penn. headquarters.

MapQuest was acquired by AOL in 2000, and its print line will be distributed by Time Warner Retail Services.