by Don George
Magazines
Magazines focusing on travel continue to flourish, and lifestyle/general-interest magazines regularly include travel coverage in their pages. Virtually every airline has its own in-flight magazine, which publishes articles about the destinations to which it flies, and niche publications that focus on specific subjects, activities or regions often feature travel pieces. Subcategories within the travel world have also developed audiences and publications of their own; for example, family travel, business travel, gay and lesbian travel, and adventure travel, and there is a healthy niche in publishing high-end literary travel writing.
Travel literature
Many major publishers produce works of travel literature on a regular basis; these tend to come from writers with already established reputations, but some newcomers break into the ranks every year. Smaller publishers represent much better opportunities for writers who are not already well known. Travel anthologies are an excellent market for narrative travel writing.
Guidebooks
Travel guidebook publishing has sustained a significant blow to its bottom line as travel information has made its way online in greater and greater volume and the book industry as a whole has ridden the wave of the digital revolution. Despite that, guidebook publishers continue to publish their traditional titles while also looking for new ways to grow their piece of the travel pie. Publishing updates to a wide range of books every few years is a high-energy operation requiring a lot of writers, so guidebook publishers are constantly on the lookout for excellent writers and particularly for travelers who know particular destinations really well.
The journey starts here…
Being a travel writer is not all palmy bungalows, Parisian cafes and safari sunsets. It’s hard work. But Mick Jagger and Drew Barrymore had it right: travel writing is one of the dream jobs. That doesn’t mean it’s beyond your reach. The world of travel writing is open to everyone; if you love to travel and you love to write, it’s a natural. No one can guarantee that you’ll be successful, but it is guaranteed that you’ll never be successful if you don’t try.
The aim of Lonely Planet’s How To Be A Travel Writer is to get you started – wherever you may be and wherever you may be traveling.
While chapter 1 aims to set the lay of the land and pose the key questions, chapter 2 focuses on the ‘writing’ part of the equation, with a short course in the strategies and tools you need to identify your best story subjects from your travels, and then to evoke each of those subjects in a transporting and compelling account.
In chapter 3 we’ll cover the traditional publishing opportunities in print, with hard-won advice on how to break into the business of newspaper, magazine and book publishing – and get paid for it.
In chapter 4 we’ll look at how to launch yourself online with your own travel blog. From the technology you’ll need to grapple with, to that big and important word ‘monetization’ (which you’ll need to get your tongue around if you want to make a living as an online travel writer) – we’ll cover it all here.
Chapter 5 deals with the tin tacks – what life is like on the road, and what are the tools and tricks you need to make it work day to day as a travel writer.
Chapter 6 is a bonus extra: how to add travel photography to your repertoire. This is your travel-writing box of tricks.
Chapter 7 provides an extensive compilation of online, UK, US and Australian resources, from travel websites and publications to publishers and writers’ groups, reference books and travel literature classics.
Throughout the book you’ll also find a treasure trove of top tips and real-life insights, including interviews with prominent travel writers, bloggers, editors and agents, to help guide you on your journey.
One last point about that journey. This book is intended for writing travelers of all kinds – from aspiring professionals to dedicated journal jotters. In the end, you don’t have to make money to profit from travel writing; sometimes the richest rewards are in the currency of experience. The goal of this book is to reveal the varied possibilities that travel writing offers, and to inspire all travelers to take advantage of those opportunities. That’s where the journey begins; where it takes you is up to you.
What makes a wonderful travel story? In one word, it’s place. Successful travel stories bring a particular place to life through a combination of factual information and vividly rendered descriptive details and anecdotes, characters and dialogue. Such stories transport the reader and convey a rich sense of the author’s experience in that location. The best travel stories also set the destination and experience in some larger context, creating rings of resonance in the reader.
The goals of good travel writing are to present an accurate and compelling evocation and assessment of an area, to bring that place and the writer’s experience to life so vividly that the reader is transported there, and to enhance the reader’s understanding of the world (whether the reader is moved to plan a journey to that spot, or simply content to visit it vicariously). In some cases, a secondary goal is to present the essential information the reader needs to visit that place and duplicate the author’s experience.
So how do you write a good travel story? The journey begins well before you set finger to keyboard.
Finding your story
Find the right subject
The very first step in writing a good travel story is finding the right subject. If the topic is right, the chances of writing a compelling piece – and of getting that piece published – will be maximized.
A good topic is usually a marriage of passion and practicality. As a writer, you want to choose a subject that will allow you to infuse your story with a sense of connection and conviction; at the same time, you need to write about a topic that will capture an editor’s attention and will fit well with the publication you’ve targeted.
Today’s publishing world offers a bountiful variety of outlets for travel writing, so it is critically important to know the market. Study the publications and websites that you’d like to write for, reading several editions of each to analyze the focus, tone, approach and length of the articles they publish.
At the same time, it is equally important to know yourself, and to focus on subjects or places that especially interest you. Are you particularly drawn to food, crafts, festivals or nightlife? Do you prefer five-star resorts or no-frills guesthouses? Do you like to explore the heart of a city or far-flung hinterlands? Finding your passion will help you narrow the publication targets for your stories – but don’t narrow your field too much. Think outside the box. If you love luxury resorts, you may think that you couldn’t possibly write for a budget travel magazine – but what about a story on finding luxury for under £50 a night?
If you’re not passionate about food, you probably wouldn’t think of approaching a food and wine magazine, but a humorous piece on surviving a week in Tuscany with a ferocious foodie could be right on target.
Understanding travel trends
As you try to marry passion with practicality, it’s critical to stay abreast of travel trends. Identifying one can become the nucleus for a story. You may create a story about the emergence of the trend itself – or you may be able to adapt that trend to a place you want to write about. For example, if you see that an editor has published a cover story on farm stays in Portugal, consider if there is a version of the farm-stay experience in New Zealand or Argentina that might interest the same editor. If the publication routinely features articles on extreme adventures, come up with an adrenalin-charged story in a destination they haven’t covered yet.
It’s also important to remember that most newspaper travel sections are inundated with stories on hard-to-get-to places halfway around the globe, but are desperate for great writing on easy-to-visit places closer to home. Try proposing a long-weekend story – they’re easier and cheaper to research, and your odds of getting published are considerably higher.
There are three kinds of trends you should monitor in o
rder to find good story ideas and get to know your market.
Objective travel trends reflect traveler behavior: where people are going, how they are getting there and what they are doing when they get there. Are ski resorts in North America suddenly all the rage with Europeans? Are more Americans barging their way along European waterways than before? Is Austria a hot destination for Australians? Does camping have a new cachet for Canadians? Is train travel booming around the globe? Are airlines or tour operators opening operations in any new and exciting destinations?
Whenever possible, anticipate these trends. If you read that a country is planning a major tourism campaign in six months’ time, pitch a story about that country right now. When a city is chosen as a future Olympics site or European Capital of Culture, you know that travelers – and editors – will be interested in knowing more about them as their time in the spotlight approaches.
Subjective travel trends are anecdotal and often qualitative. Are the travelers who once flocked to Thailand now heading to Laos? Do luxury travelers consider the spa resorts in the Maldives passé and, if so, where are they going instead? Is Belize the new Costa Rica, Brno the new Prague? (Somewhere is always the new somewhere else.) Are baby boomers turning to volunteer vacations to add meaning to their lives? Are eco-cruises suddenly in vogue?
Editorial travel trends are indicated by changes in the weight of coverage given to different regions or types of travel. For example, these days almost every serious British newspaper regularly devotes coverage to European city breaks – a sharp contrast from the past when such coverage was patchy (this, of course, is driven by the objective travel trend that low-cost flights have radically opened up inter-Europe travel since the early 2000s). Stories on luxury spas might be on the decline while articles touting green travel options are on the increase.
Exercise 1
What are your travel passions? Think about your three most recent trips. What activities were common to all three? What are the things you seek out when you travel, the experiences that really move you? Why? Make a list of three things you love to do. Consider each of these. Why do you love it and what have you learned by doing it? Could this be the nucleus for a story?
Keeping up with travel trends
Finding fresh material, spotting travel trends and keeping up to date with industry and consumer changes are essential practices for all travel writers. Chapter 7 of this book contains a wealth of online, global and regional information sources, and is a great place to start.
Scanning newspaper travel sections, travel magazines and websites will give you a feel for what your competitors are writing about, and will provide you with ideas for new stories. If you follow this practice you will also avoid the embarrassment of offering an editor a story similar to one that has just been run. Reading one or two industry magazines or websites a week will keep you informed about what airlines, tour operators, hotel groups and others in the travel industry are up to, and there are plenty of tourism facts and stats available online. Government and NGO sites are also useful.
Another useful way of finding out about what’s happening in the travel world is by joining the press mailing lists of several travel companies. Ring up the companies you’re interested in and speak to their PR departments, but try to be selective because you don’t want to be flooded with press releases. Jaded travel writers or editors will tell you that 99 per cent of what you will be sent will go straight into the rubbish bin, but if that remaining one per cent forms the basis of a fresh travel article that you can sell, then it’s worth it. And don’t discount the fact that perusing a press release and learning about a new travel initiative adds to your overall body of travel information and may well be valuable one day.
Become a specialist
To make a decent living as a travel writer, you need to be able to turn your hand to a variety of travel articles. However, it can be very much to your advantage to find the niche that best fits your expertise as a writer. By narrowing your field, you can focus on a particular slice of the travel world and become an authority on it. Travel editors, and possibly broadcasters, will begin to recognize your skill, and will think of you when they are looking for a story or comment on your subject. Specializing in this way should mean more paid work, not less, because your particular expertise will be acknowledged. In addition, writing on something that you already know about means less research, and less research means more time to write – and in the end, writing is what you’re paid for.
Choosing a niche will involve looking for a decent gap in the market – there’s very little point in specializing in a subject that everyone else has chosen as their particular topic. Obviously, you also need to select something that truly interests you and fits your lifestyle; it might be travel with children, low-cost airlines, a particular form of transport or a specific part of the world.
Travel guidebook writers are in a great position to become experts on a region or country and its beliefs, customs and lifestyle. In addition, many journalists who are successful at being acknowledged as an authority in their area have done so by writing a book about their subject. Creating a specialist blog or website can also help to get your expertise recognized. Of course, you may change your niche over time, as you adapt to changes in the world and in your own life.
The advantages of specialization are that it cultivates expertise in a particular area, subject or style, and that it can accordingly help establish you as the ‘go-to’ expert for editors and producers who are looking for content on your specialty. The disadvantage is that you might work yourself into a professional pigeonhole; if you get known for writing about Southeast Asia, for example, your editor may scoff when you propose a piece on Paris. Or if you establish yourself as a consummate humorist, you may have difficulty getting outlets to publish a serious essay or destination piece. As with most things in travel writing and life, specialization is a question of balance. Developing a specialty in one area may be your springboard to articles on the wide world; your success will ultimately depend on your flexibility, imagination, perseverance and skill.
Writer’s tip: Staying on trend
To keep on top of what’s happening in the world of travel, sign up for regular updates from sites like Travel Mole (www.travelmole.com) in the UK, and Skift (skift.com) and Travel Industry Wire (www.travelindustrywire.com) in the US. Professional organizations like the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA; abta.com) create annual trends reports which are available on their website. Follow (and join) travelers’ conversations about what’s happening on the ground in your favorite destinations on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree forum (www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree).
Writing about food
Food travel has become a genre unto itself, as countless studies show that these days we spend more time consuming food-related media than actually cooking our own meals. From a practical perspective, the beauty of specializing in food is that you considerably widen your market – there are as many magazines, newspaper supplements and websites devoted to food as there are to travel, and if you specialize in food travel, you can appeal to the audience for both.
Here is an example from Gourmet magazine, written by Jonathan Gold, that vividly brings a see-worthy site in Seoul to life:
Tsukiji in Tokyo and New York’s late Fulton Fish Market may have more of a hold on the popular imagination, but the Noryang jin Marine Products Market is one of the greatest food spectacles on earth. A yawning structure in central Seoul, as large as several football stadiums laid end to end, it’s crammed snout-to-elbow with exotic sea creatures from every conceivable aquatic locale: acres of stingrays aligned precisely as roof tiles; gilt lengths of ribbonfish; regiments of pike; oceans of halibut; endless trays of pickled clams; and more kinds of jacks and mackerels and anchovies than could be identified with a libraryful of reference books. As you weave through the 700-odd stalls, dodging the blasts of frigid water that the merchants occasionally sluice through the aisles, and the very small me
n charging through bearing very large bags of ice, you may notice the absence of anything resembling a fishy reek, replaced instead by the fresh smell of the sea.
Koreans favor species toward the bottom rungs of the food chain, so while you will see the occasional bluefin or salmon at Noryang jin, they are far outnumbered by croaker and corvina, bubbling clams and giant octopus whose arms extend further than Shaquille O’Neal’s. You will also pass miles of live-seafood tanks, many of them filled with the usual lobsters, prawns, and crabs, but also finfish of every description, and a disconcerting array of bottom-of-the-sea stuff whose uses are difficult to contemplate. (It’s hard to know which sea squirts are more alarming – the ones that look a little like warty, pulsing pineapples, or the pink ones resembling throbbing uncircumcised phalluses, right down to the undulating slit at the business end.)
There is a big auction area on the second floor of the 24-hour market, but almost all of the downstairs stalls are prepared to slice any one of their fish into sashimi for you on the spot – or better yet, to put your purchases into plastic bags and point you toward one of the cavelike seafood restaurants that line the north end of the complex, where they will serve up your sashimi in the traditional Korean style with sesame leaves, bean paste, sliced chiles, and raw garlic, and transform the rest of the creature into a seething cauldron of spicy, bright-red fish soup. Throw in some steamed Korean blue crabs, a few grilled prawns, some kimchi, and a bottle or two of soju, and you’ve got the greatest Korean breakfast in the world.
