Archives: Programs

58 minutes of video
58 minutes of audio
12 slides
18 pages of transcript

In our series walking through the construction of different types of articles, we hone in on the easy-to-write (and pitch!) staple of magazines everywhere: the front-of-book round-up.

A second type of round-up feature, the guide piece separates a large amount of information on a destination or topic into mini round-ups.

*****

When the topic of writing feature-length pieces for magazines in heavily formatted articles like round-ups or guides is broached amount freelance writers who don’t have those clips under their belt (yet), one of two emotions usually comes up:

1. abject fear at writing something that long for a magazine (and how long it will take them to do it)
2. absolute “I got this,” because you write these exact same types of pieces for blog posts

In case you can already tell where I’m going with this, neither of those is the “right” answer.

Writing a long article for a magazine (as long as it’s not narrative) is not any different than writing a short one.

But…writing a round-up for a magazine is VERY different than writing one for a website.

For the last several months, we’ve been covering how–exactly, step-by-step on both a structural and procedural level–to write different kinds of articles.

We started this series for several reasons:

1. When folks are procrastinating pitching magazines, one of the big fears they tell me is holding them back is that they don’t know how they will write the article they’re pitching if it does get assigned.
2. With writers that I coach, cutting down the amount of time it takes to put together assigned articles is one of our central themes. Any and all successful businesses focus on streamlining their methods of production, and freelance writing cannot be different if you would like to have a reasonable output of compensation for the time you’re putting in. The surest way to cut that down is to focus on using an actual process for how you approach both researching, outlining, and writing your articles, and one exists–it is just different for each type of article.
3. In various social media circles where writers go to gripe about what is troubling them with their respective editors that day, there is a certain regular refrain I see that really pains me. Writers outline in detail how long they spent on a piece and how much of their heart and soul they poured into it–and, of course, worry about whether it was done correctly as well–and then lead to the dramatic climax of the editor either: (1) killing the story entirely, (2) asking them to essentially rewrite the whole thing, or (3) never getting back to them again. On further inspection, the biggest cause of this issue is that the writer submitted a story so fall out of line with what the editor publishes, the editor was in shock. Not good for the writer, but the writer tends not to see how the situation could be avoided on their part.
4. Writing for one magazine is always different from writing for another in terms of the way the words appear on the page. That’s just style and voice and editorial positioning. But writing for one section of one magazine is also different from writing for another section of the same magazine. That’s the difference between news and interview or short round-up and narrative feature. Those differences, unlike the seemingly intangible “voice” (which we do cover extensively in the Travel Magazine Database to help save you time figuring that out), come down to repeatable formats that are easy to learn and don’t need to be constructed from the ground up every time.

So, whichever camp you fall into–whether unduly scared of breaking into longer articles, even if they seem to have a recognizable structure, OR unduly confident about something you haven’t attempted because it seems just like something you’ve already done, even though it’s rather different–today, we’ve got you covered.

Join us for Article Nuts and Bolts: How to Put Together a Guide Feature. A second type of round-up feature, the guide piece separates a large amount of information on a destination or topic into mini round-ups.

We’ll cover:
– How are these type of round-up features different than baskets of kittens and narrative features?
– How does the FOB version blossom into a feature?
– What does this look like in practice?
– How to pitch these pieces

55 minutes of video
55 minutes of audio
14 slides
20 pages of transcript

Join us as we begin this new series with the elusive “postcard.”

Its trivial name suggests many things, and a well-written postcard creates all of those sense memories and more. “Postcards,” which offer an atmospheric moment in a place, are dying art, but an excellent one for those in travel writing for the writing aspect.

*****

I’m sure you’ve seen or heard it in the news regularly.

Newspapers are dead.

Especially newspaper travel sections, right?

I can count on one hand the number of dedicated, just travel, newspaper editors remaining in the U.S.

Newspapers have taken numerous content turns, from Jeff Besos of Amazon acquiring the Washington Post and bringing his unique business sense to it to the Tribune corporation, known for the Chicago Tribune, which has pioneered a new business model very heavy on centralized content that is syndicated out and, at times, written entirely by machines. Besides Besos, celebrities like Ashton Kutcher are even buying newspapers.

Among all this entrepreneurship, which should seem exciting, critics cry that journalism and quality writing are taking a back seat.

And meaty, atmospheric pieces most of all.

The “postcard,” a type of short article that is very light on service information but heavy with atmosphere, sense of place, and good old-fashioned great reading, is one of those old dinosaurs that many think is extinct.

However, this type of article is having a fascinating nine lives moment.

While there are, definitely, still newspapers commissioning pieces (and they also pay much better than you’d expect–something else we’ll cover in today’s call), there are actually surprising places popping up to for postcard pieces both on and offline, in the editorial and content marketing spheres.

And, the beauty of mastering this type of piece is that it teaches you to distill down to the most important thing that represents a whole place–a skill that will definitely help you with all your other pieces.

Join us as we begin this new series with the elusive “postcard.”

Its trivial name suggests many things, and a well-written postcard creates all of those sense memories and more. “Postcards,” which offer an atmospheric moment in a place, are dying art, but an excellent one for those in travel writing for the writing aspect.

We will cover:
– What is a postcard really in the writing context?
– The typical structure of this section and how to create one yourself.
– Real examples of different postcards out in the world.
– How to pitch these pieces.

64 minutes of video
64 minutes of audio
22 slides
23 pages of transcript

Join us for the first webinar in our new series on breaking into guidebook writing, The Guidebook Guide Series: The Players and The Game to learn about the guidebook landscape for professional travel writers.

Not all guidebook companies are equal–for the writer, which is very different than in the public perception of the brand–when it comes to pay, treatment, and the writing process.

*****

Like any profession, travel writing has its trends of what’s “cool” that flow in multi-year segments.

In the past few decades, those ebbs and flows of popular taste have elevated enthusiasm and then relaxed it around many different types of travel writing work:

• blogging on a personal travel blog
• freelance travel blogging
• earning money as a social media influencer

Most of us are aware of the rise of these temporary stars of the field—the things that people all teach and everyone wants to do all at the same time, creating a huge flood in the market so that the tactics those first pioneers use don’t work anymore, and clients become weary of quality and consistency and skittish about investing.

But while these “new media” media have gotten a lot of press and attention, in the background, the more traditional ways of earning a living as a travel writer also have their own mini vogues among those that are focused on the work of earning a full-time living as a travel writer.

You could, in fact, say that the periodic rises in popularity of these “old school” ways of getting paid for your travel writing are actually primarily embraced by those looking for the easiest ways to make a living from their travels.

Those with their nose to the ground for where the demand (for travel writers in the global marketplace) outstrips the supply (the travel writers who know about these opportunities and put themselves in their path.

These different types of travel writing become more prevalent in waves after years of neglected interest precisely because people aren’t looking at them.

They’ve become passe, “too hard,” “extinct,” or, in the case of what I want to talk to you about today, painted as abhorrent.

This picture was painted most famously by a frequently-link-to blog post by a writer I have become friends with over the years, Leif Pettersen.

He paints a harried pictured of just how many hotels and restaurants a guidebook writer must visit in a day and the fact that they tend to work all evening when they’re on the road (writing up notes if not partaking in the local nightlife).

But the interesting thing that this post, and the picture that it paints, misses out on is that scenario is one of basically any well-paid working travel writer when they’re on the road, whether they’re traveling for magazine assignments and taking in tightly-packed tours during the day and hitting article deadlines at night or are on the road producing content for their own blog and juggling contractually obligated posts for the trip they’re on with setting up future contracts and future trips from their phone on a bus or the spotty hotel wi-fi at night.

Most importantly though, guidebook writing–like all types of writing–is not for everyone because it prizes speed, organization, and project management skills.

If you have those in spades, you’ll come out of your $35,000 book contract with an excellent hourly rate. If not, you’ll wind up making a few dollars an hour.

But, we have to compare that hourly rate with what I know that many of your are unfortunately taking right now when you write only. I hear far too often that people are writing for sites that pay $20 or perhaps $50 a post and are spending 20 to 50 hours on all of the research, writing, and tweaking involved for those pieces.

Now, I’m not saying all online travel writing pays that. I’ve personally received or been offered everything from $350 for a sub-1,000-word blog post to $6,500 for one month of copywriting work.

And I’ve heard from people that I coach that these living wages are not only still out there, but often come from an unexpected place, such as tourism boards that pay no less than $150 per blog post no matter the length or banality.

Editors have also told me that some online outlets are paying fifty cents per word for magazine-style stories!

So, I’m not saying that writing guidebooks is for everyone, or the best way to make a living writing about travel today.

But rather, that you should be informed about your options—especially when they involved mid-five-figure contracts paying for research that will fuel innumerable stories you can sell elsewhere with no qualms about who has paid for your trip.

Join us for the first webinar in our new series on breaking into guidebook writing, The Guidebook Guide Series: The Players and The Game to learn about the guidebook landscape for professional travel writers.

Not all guidebook companies are equal–for the writer, which is very different than in the public perception of the brand–when it comes to pay, treatment, and the writing process.

We will cover:
– Why should you listen up when I talk about guidebooks – especially if you’re (a) new, or (b) don’t have enough work on your plate right now
– How do the different major guidebook companies set themselves apart for consumers?
– How each company’s culture plays out for writers?
– What do you need to know to break in?

55 minutes of video
55 minutes of audio
18 slides
18 pages of transcript

In our new series walking through the construction of different types of articles, we hone in on the easy-to-write (and pitch!) staple of magazines everywhere: the front-of-book round-up.

The bread-and-butter of travel features, the quest piece, is one of the easiest features to pitch, get readers interested in, and research.

*****

I’ve been in a travel writing conference for the last couple days observing something very curious throughout the keynotes.

Both keynotes—one by Don George, who was formerly travel editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and Lonely Planet’s annual travel writing short story anthologies, and another by Spud Hilton, the current travel editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, who has won an obscene number of top travel writing awards in that position—focused on storytelling.

Each keynote was excellent, composed of a heavy dose of first-person experience layered with specific, well-articulated and vitally important tips of how to completely overhaul your stories for the better.

But at the end of both keynotes, both speakers were asked nearly identical questions along the lines of:

That all sounds great, but who is really publishing narrative stories like that right now? No one really wants to publish stories about the writer’s experiences with other cultures.

After this question, in both cases, a very curious thing happened.

The speakers were just plain confused.

Their entire keynotes had been predicated on that power of narrative stories, the fact that they go back for thousands of years, and the justification that the reason storytelling in travel writing is the way to go is that it is a natural human impulse.

So they were just a bit dumbfounded at these questions of the “who really wants to publish stories anyway?” variety.

But I could see where the disconnect was brewing.

When Don spoke about storytelling, he hammered home the point that your story doesn’t exist without a point, without a takeaway, without something that your entire story focuses on without divergence.

The lack of having a point is the most common things editors complain about when you ask them what their pitching pet peeves are.

When Spud spoke about storytelling, he honed in on the repeatable structure that runs through everything from James Bond films to ancient myths to travel articles today.

But so many writers I see facing a story try to reinvent the wheel each time (much to the detriment of their hourly rate, to boot!).

The writers who posed these questions that puzzled the speakers so were operating from a place of trying and failing, and perhaps even of desperation, in terms of having editors take them up on the pitches they preferred.

The real disconnect though, was that the keynote speakers were trying to offer these writers the answer to their real, burning questions (“why aren’t editors responding to my emails?” or “why aren’t editors giving me assignments?”) without tying in the fact that all of the advice they were giving was exactly the way to write stories that win awards, get editors to double-take at the amazing quality of your writing, and generally turn you into the type of travel writer with the level of success you’ve always dreamed of.

In the webinar, Article Nuts and Bolts: How to Put Together a Quest Piece we continue our Article Nuts and Bolts series that breaks down exactly, step-by-step and paragraph-by-paragraph how to write different types of articles so you never have to waste time researching what should and shouldn’t go or what research you should be doing again.

The bread-and-butter of travel features, the quest piece, is one of the easiest features to pitch, get readers interested in, and research.

We’ll cover:
– Why is the quest such an important type of feature?
– How must we structure our quest journey and article?
– Real-world examples
– How to pitch these pieces

64 minutes of video
64 minutes of audio
16 slides
22 pages of transcript

In our second webinar in our series on guidebooks, we’re going to dive deep into the vital work that makes writing any book, from a thriller to a guidebook, possible: the research.

Join us to learn what the day-to-day work of the guidebook writer in the field really looks like.

While you may have heard the bad and the ugly about life as a guidebook writer, we dig into the reality of those who have made it their full-time gig.

*****

When The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map first came out, weighing in at more than a pound and featuring nearly 400 pages covering every facet of the travel writing life from the schedule to the rates, the negotiating tactics to lists of hundreds and hundreds of magazines to target, and templates for everything from pitches to mapping out your best writing hours, a lot of people asked me how long it took to write.

Typically, these people were:
(a) not full-time writers, and/or
(b) not people who had ever written a book-length work

Before I was a full-time freelance writer, I was a full-time in-house writer at a university. While I do not mean to say that things move at the light speed of a newsroom or digital agency in my former job, I was accustomed to getting big projects out and writing something clever and deliverable on deadline whether you wanted to or not.

I’d put together book-length works that required interviewing dozens of professors and collecting research from all over the institution before.

And when I left the university, one of my first freelance writing gigs was as a daily news writer for the online offshoot of a print magazine. Suffice to say, I did not go into my book with high ideals of writing the great American novel or a lack of practical experience about how to put such a thing together and how long it would take me.

But even explaining that to people, I still think they did not like my answer to their simple question, typically voiced with awe and expectation of a double-digit (in months) response:

“About a month?”

To some of you, that will make absolute sense.

To others, it may sound like voodoo. And for others still, it will sound like a sure indication of a lack of depth of content and rigorous research.

But this is how writing books professionally–for a living–works.

The first major writing conference I ever attended, I remember the author who delivered the keynote being introduced, but not the introduction.

He had won so many awards and written so many things; the dense introduction was unretainable.

When he spoke about his plucky approach to getting an agent (tell them you’ll be in New York and want to meet, book appointments, then book a flight–I’ve heard of this working well for several high-profile authors!), he inspired us with his grit.

As he moved on to talk about all the simultaneous projects he now worked on side-by-side, however, he inspired me with the careerism of his writing.

Sorting through his Wikipedia page, I find he has more than 85 published works (not articles, but works), many of those following 2010 (64), and most following 2000 (80).

That’s an average of eight published works a year this decade.

Stephen King regularly puts out two book-length works each year on top of numerous short stories and other writings, and those often go onto to become TV projects because of his world-building appeal.

In writing, “mass production” is usually a derogatory term, but it clearly, in the careers of this highly awarded writers, also has its merits.

But why am I prattling on to you about the amount of time it “should” take to write a book when our focus is on guidebooks?

In order to truly understand the place of guidebook writing in a travel writing career, you must confront several fundamental truths:

1. Writing a lot quickly does not need to mean bad quality.
2. The work of writing a lot quickly is definitely not for everyone.
3. Writing a lot quickly can lead to a big, lauded career.

In our second webinar in this month’s series on guidebooks, we’re going to dive deep into the vital work that makes writing any book, from a thriller to a guidebook, possible: the research.

Join us for our The Guidebook Guide Series – The Life of a Guidebook Writer on the Road webinar today to learn what the day-to-day work of the guidebook writer in the field really looks like.

While you may have heard the bad and the ugly about life as a guidebook writer, we dig into the reality of those who have made it their full-time gig.

We will cover:
– The disclaimer: guidebook writing sourcing
– Another disclaimer: this is work
– The Five Pillar to consider
– The pitfalls of poor preparation

55 minutes of video
55 minutes of audio
12 slides
23 pages of transcript

In our series walking through the construction of different types of articles, we hone in on the easy-to-write (and pitch!) staple of magazines everywhere: the front-of-book round-up.

In this webinar, we dive into a type of round-up feature in which you take a deep dive into a handful of interestingly-related topics.

*****

When the topic of writing feature-length pieces for magazines in heavily formatted articles like round-ups or guides is broached amount freelance writers who don’t have those clips under their belt (yet), one of two emotions usually comes up:

1. abject fear at writing something that long for a magazine (and how long it will take them to do it)
2. absolute “I got this,” because you write these exact same types of pieces for blog posts

In case you can already tell where I’m going with this, neither of those is the “right” answer.

Writing a long article for a magazine (as long as it’s not narrative) is not any different than writing a short one.

But…writing a round-up for a magazine is VERY different than writing one for a website.

For the last several months, we’ve been covering how–exactly, step-by-step on both a structural and procedural level–to write different kinds of articles.

We started this series for several reasons:

1. When folks are procrastinating pitching magazines, one of the big fears they tell me is holding them back is that they don’t know how they will write the article they’re pitching if it does get assigned.
2. With writers that I coach, cutting down the amount of time it takes to put together assigned articles is one of our central themes. Any and all successful businesses focus on streamlining their methods of production, and freelance writing cannot be different if you would like to have a reasonable output of compensation for the time you’re putting in. The surest way to cut that down is to focus on using an actual process for how you approach both researching, outlining, and writing your articles, and one exists–it is just different for each type of article.
3. In various social media circles where writers go to gripe about what is troubling them with their respective editors that day, there is a certain regular refrain I see that really pains me. Writers outline in detail how long they spent on a piece and how much of their heart and soul they poured into it–and, of course, worry about whether it was done correctly as well–and then lead to the dramatic climax of the editor either: (1) killing the story entirely, (2) asking them to essentially rewrite the whole thing, or (3) never getting back to them again. On further inspection, the biggest cause of this issue is that the writer submitted a story that fall out of line with what the editor publishes, the editor was in shock. Not good for the writer, but the writer tends not to see how the situation could be avoided on their part.
4. Writing for one magazine is always different from writing for another in terms of the way the words appear on the page. That’s just style and voice and editorial positioning. But writing for one section of one magazine is also different from writing for another section of the same magazine. That’s the difference between news and interview or short round-up and narrative feature. Those differences, unlike the seemingly intangible “voice” (which we do cover extensively in the Travel Magazine Database to help save you time figuring that out), come down to repeatable formats that are easy to learn and don’t need to be constructed from the ground up every time.

So, whichever camp you fall into–whether unduly scared of breaking into longer articles, even if they seem to have a recognizable structure, OR unduly confident about something you haven’t attempted because it seems just like something you’ve already done, even though it’s rather different–today, we’ve got you covered.

Join us for Article Nuts and Bolts: How to Put Together a Basket of Kittens Feature. In this webinar, we dive into a type of round-up feature in which you take a deep dive into a handful of interestingly-related topics.

We’ll cover:
– Where does this basket of kittens concept come from anyway?
– How do you create the perfect basket?
– What type of magazines use basket-of-kittens features?
– How to pitch these pieces?

43 minutes of video
43 minutes of audio
14 slides
15 pages of transcripts

While some of your are at the point in your writing career of tentatively dipping your toes into the shallow end of the features pool, others of you have drunk the storytelling Koolaid and are looking for what is next.

Where do you go when you’re bored of writing features? What is next?

When you’ve amassed a considerable amount of knowledge about the areas you’ve covered along with writing experience, it’s time to consider the wide world of essays. There are an astonishing number of outlets to place them in, the pay is there, and, most importantly, you have the satisfaction of writing exactly what you want to write.

We’ll cover the landscape as well as how to start diving into writing magazine-style essays.

*****

When you hear the term essay, similar to the even more antiquated concept of a “composition,” you likely think back to your school days more quickly than your bank account.

Especially if the phrase used is “personal essay,” which fills an alarming number of people with dread.

The thing is, many of you are incredibly acquainted, both as readers and as writers, with the personal essays, just under a different name: blog posts.

I’m not saying all blog posts are personal essays or that all personal essays are blog posts–let’s be very clear about that–but there are amazing examples of the personal essay, as a piece of writing, that appear within the physical confines of the blogosphere.

As many of you are familiar with this first-person, thoughtful, exploration style of writing, it’s natural to seek out opportunities to do so for magazines when you begin to move into that space.

But it is just as easy, when you venture out into pitching paying markets, or simply flip through issues of various publications on the newsstand to get the sinking feeling that writing that pays is all top five lists, destination guides, or narrative features founded on interviews with other people rather than the insights and expertise of you, the writer.

All of these types of articles do exist, and someone is getting paid to write them (though it is always important to check if that someone is a member of the publication’s staff or a freelance writer).

However. You can not only get paid for essays, but also paid very, very well–that process just begins with looking outside of those markets you’re flipping through on the newsstand and feeling bummed about.

Join us for our webinar on The Art of the Essay and How to Find Them Everywhere.

While some of you are at the point in your writing career of tentatively dipping your toes into the shallow end of the features pool, others of you have drunk the storytelling Koolaid and are looking for what is next. Where do you go when you’re bored of writing features? What is next? When you’ve amassed a considerable amount of knowledge about the areas you’ve covered along with writing experience, it’s time to consider the wide world of essays.

There are an astonishing number of outlets to place them in, the pay is there, and, most importantly, you have the satisfaction of writing exactly what you want to write. We’ll cover the landscape as well as how to start diving into writing magazine-style essays.

We will cover: 
– What do we mean by “essay?”
– How to compass a personal essay
– How essays fit into the greater marketplace and how the opportunities have changed since the advent of blogging
– Markets you can reach out to right now for your personal essays