How to be a Travel Writer

by Don George

  Record-keeping is important not only when it comes to taxes, of course. If you are traveling on assignment for a US publication, and that publication is paying your expenses, you will have to turn in a record of your expenses with related receipts in order to be reimbursed. Keep all your receipts in a safe place, and carry a blank receipt book so you can supply your own receipts in situations where the local establishment doesn’t have a form.

  To avoid the nightmare of sorting through dozens of scraps of paper days or even weeks after a trip, try to record all your expenses at the end of each day – you’ll then have the date, the place, the reason for the expense and the amount, all ready to be categorized and submitted when you get home. It’s also a good idea to keep a running tab of your expenses, because if you go over your expense limit, you’ll be responsible for the difference.

  Record-keeping is also fundamental when it comes to income. Having a story published doesn’t automatically guarantee that a check will appear in the mail. These days most publications expect or require you to submit an invoice after your piece has been published; the invoice should include the subject of the article, the date of publication, the agreed-upon payment for the piece, your address, and your social security number (if in the USA) or ABN (if in Australia). It is also a good idea to include your phone number and/or email address so you can be contacted if necessary. And even after you’ve submitted your invoice, it isn’t the editor’s responsibility to keep track of whether you’ve been paid for your piece; they have far too many other balls to juggle. You are the only person who will be watching out for you – and you can be sure that at some point your payment will slip through the cracks.

  Keep track of your publications and payments rigorously, and follow up on any outstanding invoices. The best practice is to create a table or spreadsheet that tracks all of your proposals and story submissions – where and when you submitted them and what responses you received, plus any commissions and deadlines, expenses submitted (if in the USA), dates of publication and payments received.

  The inconvenient truth is that as a freelancer you have to be a businessperson, too. Your writing is your livelihood and you need to keep your business records up to date, as if your life depended on them – and it usually does.

  Travel insurance

  It’s also extremely important to make sure you are covered by insurance when you travel. In the UK and Australia, you will need business travel insurance if you are traveling to research and write. Most travel writers take out annual policies so they don’t have to worry about this aspect of their trip each time they go somewhere. In the USA, writers should check to see what kind of coverage they already have through their personal insurance and what kind of supplemental travel coverage they may need. Consult with your insurance agent to make sure you have protection for all of the potential hazards of your professional world-wanderings, from trip disruption or cancellation to loss of business equipment and medical emergencies.

  Legal matters

  As a professional, you need to be aware of the legal protections and issues pertinent to your work.

  Copyright

  Any original text that you write as a freelancer is your intellectual property and is automatically protected by copyright; you don’t need to apply for it. As the writer, you can grant certain rights or licenses to publish your work. Copyright lasts for 70 years after your death. For more information about copyright, contact the British Copyright Council (www.britishcopyright.org), the US Copyright Office (copyright.gov) or the Australian Copyright Council (www.copyright.org.au).

  Electronic rights

  Electronic rights are an extremely thorny issue. When a newspaper, magazine or journal agrees to publish your article in print, they usually expect to have the right to publish your article on their website, without any further payment. This is especially true in the UK, where electronic rights are usually non-negotiable. These issues should be spelled out in your contract or on the outlet’s website. Writers’ groups make the compelling argument that if a print outlet posts an article on its website, it effectively takes away the writer’s ability to sell that article to a web-only outlet, and that therefore the writer should be paid separately for the web posting. Most publishers, however, will try to secure all the rights they can for the lowest possible fee. If you’re absolutely determined to negotiate over these matters, in the USA at least, enter into those negotiations with a clear sense of what you think your work is worth, what conditions you will accept and what offers are simply unacceptable – but you should also question whether you are hindering your career more than helping it. Each case will be different, depending on the article, the publication and the pay, but it is always best to have a good idea of your priorities and options in advance, and to know exactly what you want to get out of a negotiation.

  Contracts

  Most contracts, whether for newspaper or magazine articles or for books, are forbidding. They’re written by lawyers and in tiny type. Your mind goes numb when you read them. But they spell out your legal obligations and opportunities, so it is extremely worth your while to plow through them slowly and to make sure you understand every clause. If it is a book publishing contract and you have an agent, they’ll explain everything to you and endeavor to negotiate the best possible deal. Otherwise, you may want to consult a friend who has dealt with contracts before or, in extreme cases, a lawyer who can explain the fine print; or contact one of the associations listed below. You can also ask your editor to explain points you don’t understand.

  In theory at least, most UK newspapers and magazines will email you a contract before you start writing for them. Sometimes this contract will last a year or longer. If you write several articles for the same newspaper or magazine, it’s rare that you’ll receive a contract for each piece. However, there will be times when you won’t receive anything at all because staff on the travel desk are just too busy. In the USA, magazines send contracts with each article, while most newspapers instead send annual contracts.

  Most newspaper and magazine contracts are standard, and editors are usually extremely unwilling to deviate from the template. The most crucial considerations are your fee (and whether it will be paid on acceptance or on publication), your deadline, the rights they are buying and the rights you retain, and whether a kill fee will be paid if they do not publish your work. Book publishers send their authors very detailed contracts. One detail you’ll want to make sure your contract specifies is the percentage of compensation you will receive if excerpts from your book are published in a newspaper, magazine or anthology.

  If you want advice on a contract, in the USA you can contact the Authors Guild (www.authorsguild.org) and the National Writers Union (nwu.org); in the UK you can ask the Society of Authors (www.societyofauthors.org) or the Writers’ Guild (writersguild.org.uk); in Australia the Society of Authors (www.asauthors.org) can review a contract for you. In most cases you’ll need to be a member of the organization to access this service.

  A writer’s view: Stanley Stewart

  Stanley Stewart is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Contributing Editor for Condé Nast Traveller magazine (UK). He writes about travel for publications including The Sunday Times and the Financial Times in the UK and National Geographic Traveler (US). Find him online at www.stanleystewart.com and on Instagram at stanleystewart.writer.

  My own start was unusual. I began with a book. I set off up the Nile for nine months, without a publishing contract, wrote an account of the journey and sold it to a publisher when it was complete. The success of the book opened doors for travel journalism which helped to feed, financially, more books.

  It may sound blazingly obvious, but the best preparation for a career in travel writing is travel. Take a year off and travel round the world. When you come to pitching a story about the hot springs of Iceland, you will have the advantage of sounding like someone who knows what they are talking about. But remember that you must be able to write. A
nd the best education for a writer is to read, as widely as possible.

  Travel writers need to be able to double up – so when you are in Rome doing a story about riding a Vespa along the Appian Way for newspaper X, you are also getting the info together for a restaurant story for magazine Y and a piece on the Coliseum for newspaper Z.

  Travel stories must be stories, not merely descriptions of a destination. It is not enough to enthuse about the blue seas or the difficulties of the hike or the charm of the old quarter. What you write must be able to stand as a good story when all the ‘color’ and atmosphere are stripped away.

  Good travel writing is done by good writers who travel. It is not enough to have swum through piranha-infested waters to the source of the Amazon. You must be able to write well to convey that experience. Good travel writing needs much the same ingredients as any good story – narrative drive, characters, dialogue, atmosphere, revelation. Too many travel writers seem to believe that the journey ‘makes’ the story. Anyone can travel to Timbuktu, but only a few people will write about the journey well.

  On the most basic level, a camera can be used to make a visual record of a place you want to write about later. Use it to take photographs of particular features you may want to remember in detail, and that might figure in an article or story. When writing your piece, you can surround yourself with images of your destination or journey to help transport you back to a situation or place.

  Photos can be used to record information you may want to use in your story, such as details provided in a historic plaque, temple marker or store sign, or in the printed explanatory text hung beside a work of art in a museum or gallery – quite simply, they can save you from having to take copious notes. These ‘memory snaps’ can be taken on any light, compact digital camera, or even on your cell phone.

  Ideally, however, you want to be taking photos of publishable quality, so that if the opportunity arises you can sell both your words and your pictures to a publication. This is a very different ball game and demands rather more sophistication in terms of equipment and photography skills.

  How photography helps your writing career

  Photography and writing are two very different arts, requiring completely different skills. However, it does make sense to think about developing your photography skills if you are a travel writer. You are there, in situ; you know what you’re going to write about and you’re in a unique position to illustrate your words.

  If you’re writing your own travel blog, you’ll probably want to use your own photos to accompany and enliven your posts; and for many online publications the expectation is that you’ll supply images along with your story. If you’re writing for a newspaper, having relevant photos could help you get published. Your story might be good but not so great that the editor simply has to run it; having compelling photos can sometimes push the editor into deciding to publish your package. Photographs taken by guidebook authors are sometimes published in the guidebook they’re writing, particularly if they’re researching a remote location or have pictures of unusual or infrequent events (festivals or rituals, for instance).

  Glossy travel magazines are very photo-led, and employ a stable of professional photographers who are sent into the field to illustrate middle-of-the-book feature stories. The glossies might occasionally be interested in competent photos for front-of-the-book or back-of-the-book stories, but you have a better chance with more down-to-earth travel magazines. In fact, many tighter-budget magazines actually rely on their writers to provide photos. The better your photos, the better your chances of getting published.

  Usually, selling both a story and photos to a publication is obviously more lucrative than selling the story alone. While stock libraries, photo-sharing sites and the opening up of the profession of photography to virtually anyone with a smartphone means that photography rates are not what they once were, it is a way you can potentially boost your income as a writer. If an editor requests photos, always ask if you’ll be paid extra (and how much) for any photos that are used.

  Choosing your gear

  Flip through the pages of camera magazines and websites and it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the choice of cameras. Models are updated or replaced at an alarming rate, with every new wave being spruiked as significantly better than the last. You just have to accept that the camera you buy will be superseded sooner rather than later. But it’s not as bad as it sounds. Technology has reached a point where the changes are no longer as regularly dramatic as they once were, and the camera you buy today will only need to be upgraded if your interest level or requirements change.

  First you’ll need to decide between the four types of digital camera that are of most interest to travelers: compact, bridge, compact system cameras and digital single lens reflex (DSLR). Within these categories you’ll find cameras to suit every budget and requirement level.

  Compact digital cameras, also known as digicams or point-and-shoot, are ideal for taking photos with a minimum of fuss – perfect if you want to travel light. If all you need is an image to publish on your blog, a fully automatic, 12 MP compact digital camera will easily do the job.

  Bridge cameras, also known as superzooms or ‘all in one’ cameras, sit between compacts and DSLRs in terms of style and size; the best of them have feature sets that rival mid-range DSLRs. They may appeal to people who want to take photos of a reasonable quality, but like the more compact package and aren’t interested in extending their kit with additional lenses.

  Compact system cameras fill the gap between compact cameras and DSLRs by combining the best features of both (including interchangeable lenses), to produce excellent image quality in a compact style. These cameras will appeal to people who always wanted the flexibility to choose different lenses, but were put off by the size and weight of DSLR systems.

  Digital single lens reflex cameras (DSLRs) are the only choice if you’re serious about travel photography and aiming for success across the widest range of subjects in all situations. Their versatility, the sheer number of useful features and the ability to take interchangeable lenses to suit all subjects makes this the ideal travel camera.

  Other useful photographic kit

  There are a few other pieces of equipment and a range of accessories that will enhance your photography experience and ensure things go smoothly on the road.

  • A tripod helps achieve images with the finest detail, minimizes noise in low light indoors or out, maximizes depth of field and enables slow shutter speeds for creative effects.

  • A shutter-release cable, or remote wireless switch, is needed if you mount your camera on a tripod and shoot at slow speeds so you can fire the shutter without touching the camera.

  • A flash light (if it’s not built in to your camera) is handy when it’s inconvenient, impractical, prohibited or simply too dark (even for quality sensors) to set up a tripod.

  • An ultra violet (UV) or skylight filter on every lens will protect lenses from dirt, dust, water and fingerprints.

  • A polarizer filter eliminates unwanted reflections by cutting down glare from reflective surfaces. It intensifies colors and increases contrast.

  • Lens hoods fitted to every lens prevent stray light entering the lens, which can cause flare, reduce sharpness and affect exposure settings. They will also protect the lenses.

  Travel photography tips

  As a travel photographer, what kinds of photos should you be taking? Think like an editor, and take photos that will help readers to see your story, complementing and enhancing your words. Your photos should illustrate the highlights and main points of your story – the landscapes or cafes, people or animals, ferries or tuk-tuks.

  Submit a wide variety of photos, from close-up details to expansive vistas, and shoot a robust mixture of horizontal and vertical images, because you never know what size space will be available in a publication. If you’re photographing a building, event or landscape that is absolutely crucial to your story, be sure to take b
oth vertical and horizontal shots.

  There is loads of information out there on how to take good photos. A couple of our favorites are Digital Photography School (digital-photography-school.com, run by Darren Rowse who also runs ProBlogger), where you’ll find lots of free tips and tools as well as more in-depth paid courses; and in print, Lonely Planet’s Travel Photography by Richard I’Anson. Read on for some of Richard’s top tips.

  The ‘golden hour’ of light is usually one to two hours after sunrise and before sunset

  © jackie cooper / Getty Images

  Learn to see the light

  The ability of light to transform a subject or scene from the ordinary to the extraordinary is one of the most powerful tools at the photographer’s disposal. To be able to ‘see’ light and to understand how it translates on to the sensor and how it impacts on your compositions is the final building block in creating striking images.

  There’s light and there’s the ‘right light’. The keys to the right light are its color, quality and direction. As your eye settles on a potential subject, note where the light is falling and select a viewpoint from where the light enhances your subject. There is an optimal time of day to photograph everything, so be prepared to wait or return at another time if you can’t find a viewpoint that works. However, most subjects are enhanced by the warm light created by the low angle of the sun in the one to two hours after sunrise and before sunset. At these times shadows are long and textures and shapes are accentuated. If you’re serious about creating good pictures, this is the time to be out and about shooting. Given all other things are equal, it’s the light in which a photographer shoots that sets images apart.