RANDOM
ADVICE FROM PROFESSIONALS
Below are random pieces of advice from professional travel writers to people starting out in the field. I culled them from writersmarketplace.com.
Not all agree with each other. There are as many ways of being a successful travel writer as there are, er, successful travel writers. Not deep, but true, eh?
Basically, if you pitch like a cyborg with an arm stuck in overdrive, don't take rejection personally, meet your deadlines, and have rich parents, you should be fine.
ADVICE TO NEWBIES FROM PROFESSIONAL TRAVEL WRITERS
Too many
new writers worry about what they have to do to get free trips. What they
should worry about is getting published. Reach print often and the freebies
will follow.
___
Be meticulous
in collecting facts and accurate in presenting them. Nothing is a greater
turn-off to editors and ultimately writers than information that is just
plain wrong. (Having said this, I point out that on several occasions,
editors have taken my correct facts and made them wrong, but that's another
issue.)
___
Meet your
deadlines.
___
Be cooperative
with editors who want you to modify or change your material, even if you
know that your original is better.
___
It helps
to be known for something or someplace and one's own "backyard" is a travel
destination to someone else. Start by writing about your town and/or city,
the traveling will come later.
___
Potential
income is often increased considerably by providing the photographs to
go with the story. It's an unfortunate fact that generally speaking, for
the amount of effort you put into it, the photography pays better than
the writing. A newspaper that pays, say, $200 for a story, may pay $50
or more per picture to go with the text. This could bump up the payment
to $300 or $400, and you can STILL re-sell it to other papers.
___
Some writers
refuse to permit their stories to appear on a newspaper's
own web site. My (admittedly controversial) position is that as long as
such use does not prevent me from selling to another market, I allow it.
I have found that pointing this out gives me a competitive advantage over
those who don't. (However, I do not give the paper permission to resell
the story, so that some other publication uses it in competition with
my own sales efforts.)
___
My experience
is mostly with newspapers, and in dealing with them I've found that sending
an entire story "on spec," rather than a query, is much better. All are
taking via email these days. And if you can point out that the photos
are also available by email, all the better.
___
Query letters,
and their negative responses, tend to be discouraging. But they are sometimes
more appropriate when dealing with magazines. But even there, I have sometimes
submitted, and sold, entire stories.
___
If one turns
it down, send to another, and another, and if you run out of magazine
possibilities, then send it to a dozen or two newspapers. If you still
can't sell it, you can always re-work it from another angle, and start
the round again. Any story which is basically sound will eventually find
a home, and perhaps several homes, if you give it enough time and effort.
___
Yesterday
after supplying sample images to a photo request, I received an e-mail
requesting high rez images and an attached work for hire contract which
would have surrendered all rights to my photographs for a fee that was
reasonable for one-time use, but certainly not for loss of my copyright
to those images. My reply was no. Within hours I had an agreement for
the purchase of one time usage of my images.
The point
is that it may be a gut wrenching experience, but if one does not say
no to unfair deals, they will never know if there is room for fair and
reasonable negotiations. I say this not to criticize, but to encourage
those that are hesitant to say no, that it is worth the effort,
___
Some stories
continue to sell over time. I have one piece that relates to the Olympics,
and I have sold it at least once or twice every two years for the past
five years or so -- sometimes with just a small change in a paragraph
or two.
___
My suggestion
is: Make the editor's life easier. That
means: Write to the appropriate length, meet your deadlines, be accurate,
be neat, be responsive, be professional.
___
View your
junket as a business trip. You might be an accountant or an attorney summoned
to consult with a client in Singapore or Paris. Of a financial reporter
assigned to report on an airplane manufacturing facility in Brazil. You
may enjoy yourself, but the reason you are going is to work. Press trips
often are exhausting and you may feel you should spend more time in a
place, and pay your own expenses, in order to report on it accurately.
If you do not earn enough money to pay for the time and effort put into
gather information, you are not a professional.
___
Beginning
travel writers have better chances of selling to travel magazines when
they submit short, "front of the book" pieces. These departments also
appear in many airline inflights, regional publications and magazines
such as Sunset. Not only are the short pieces less overwhelming for the
beginning writer, but less chancey for editors to assign.
___
Many of
the top newspapers and publications refuse to entertain any material gleaned
from sponsored or discounted trips.
Going a little
further than that, though, some markets subscribe to that policy publicly,
but privately they often wink at it -- a sort of "don't ask, don't tell"
approach. One could say this is a testimony to the hypocrisy of the whole
business. Often it merely represents a different point of view between
the editor and the publisher, the latter of which would like to promote
his "holier than thou" approach to the subject.
Sometimes,
they veer from it if they particularly trust the writer and the writer's
professionalism. In fact, every magazine or newspaper that I know of which
has that policy, has departed from it at one time or another.
___
Whenever
possible, either live where the stories are or where the markets are --
preferably both. For that reason, I write a lot about Hawaii (in fact
a greater percentage of my output than a few years ago), and I tell editors
that I specialize in Pacific destinations in general. Which is true, and
is sometimes significant.
Having a specialty
of some kind always helps, and gives you the aura of an authority. And
the Hawaii stories I write are more easily placed in markets that DO strictly
subscribe to the "no sponsored trips" policy.
___
Having a personal/professional web site of my own has been very helpful to me in recent years. If an editor or a public relations executive wants to see just what I have done, he can do so with a few deft clicks of the mouse. This is particularly important when an editor wants to see some clips, and you can direct the editor immediately to links on your site.
• 10 Ways To Piss Off An Editor
• 10 Ways To Annoy A Freelancer
• Random Advice from Professionals
• Self-Syndicating, The Holy Grail
• On The Road E-Practicalities
• All-Purpose Bad Travel Story
