Back in 2007, BBC had acquired 75 percent of the company for nearly $142.8 million. This deal gives BBC the remaining 25 percent of the company. On the digital side, the company enjoys 8.5 million unique users on their website and has produced 140 applications.

The Guardian reports: “A strategy to grow non-print revenues – digital revenues rose 37% year on year in the 12 months to the end of March 2010 – and spinoff products such as a Lonely Planet magazine has pushed the business back into the black with profits of £1.9m [$3 million]. Lonely Planet’s non-print revenues have grown from 9% in 2007 to 22% in the year to the end of March 2010.”

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All three publishers have no plans to change their guides. “We wouldn’t consider changing our information based on pressure from governments or local publishers,” said Rough Guides spokesman Anna Paynton. Hall added: “We choose not to let outside influences affect our editorial decisions.”

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The Australian-born writer had been based in Switzerland “on and off” for nearly 20 years, according to Lonely Planet. He was not on assignment for the guide-book publisher in China, but the company had said that it was aware of the situation and was in touch with his family.

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Booktrade.info reports on a planned holiday for the staff of Lonely Planet. Armed with a London edition of the newly launched Encounter series they took to the streets of the Capital, tasked with using the book to discover somewhere they had never been before. The company’s marketing executive Myriam Cotterell said: “This was the chance for staff to get to know a new series in the best way possible, by getting out there and using it themselves as well as having some fun in the process.”

But it wasn’t as if staff could simply run out and enjoy the good weather, catch a movie or play your regular brand of hooky, Booktrade continues. Staff instead were given a set of instructions: to Encounter someone/somewhere new, to take a photo of something or someone new and to try out one listing from the guide and review it, picking up tidbits of new information on the way. Preview copies of the guides, which are all written by locals, were also handed out to 1,000 travellers on Lastminute.com.

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Meanwhile, Sunday Styles ran Stephanie Rosenbloom‘s article on books, seminars and classes that tackle the tough question of how to deal with “difficult” people. Nan Harrison, the vice president of training resources and publication sales for CareerTrack, which every month presents more than 50 public “difficult people” seminars across the country, attributes the increased popularity of such workshops to a desire to improve workplace skills in a time of corporate downsizing and a more competitive job market. “I think the stakes have gotten higher for everyone,” she said. Then again, maybe the problem isn’t them, it’s you. “There’s a good quote from the Talmud,” said Bruce Elvin, an associate dean and the director of the Career and Professional Development Center at Duke Law School. “‘We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.’ That really in my view sums this topic up.”

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