How to be a Travel Writer

by Don George

  In the UK, many newspapers and magazines don’t have the time or staff to send you a rejection note and so you’re often left in limbo, not knowing what to do next with your unsolicited submission or proposal. To avoid this situation, it’s a good idea to send a covering letter with your article or proposal saying that if you haven’t received a response within one month for newspapers, or two to three months for magazines, you intend to submit it elsewhere. If you haven’t heard from the publication after this amount of time, write a courtesy letter or email telling them that you will now be submitting your story or proposal to other outlets.

  In the USA, rejection notes, whether from newspapers or magazines, usually come in the form of either a form rejection or a personal rejection. A form rejection is a preprinted note or templated email, thanking you for your proposal, but letting you know that it can’t be used. While this method may seem very cold and impersonal, it’s just a practicality for most editors. Much as they might want to add a personal note, they simply don’t have the time.

  A personal rejection is a printed or hand-written note, clearly addressed personally to you. The editor may write that, while they cannot use your submission, you should feel free to send in other articles, or that they liked your article but just published a piece on the same subject. Consider this to be a major victory, and follow up immediately with another submission or proposal, thanking the editor in your cover letter for the encouraging note they just sent you. If the editor opens the door a crack in this way, you need to keep pushing and open it further. Rejections can and do lead to acceptances. You just have to keep knocking – politely but persistently – on the door.

  Form rejection letters are often used by book publishers, but if an editor does include any comments, you should review them carefully. Don’t bury your manuscript away after the first rejection. Bear in mind that most of literature’s greatest success stories were rejected by at least one publisher – and sometimes dozens – before making it into print.

  Writer’s tip: Celebrated rejections

  If serial rejections start getting you down, ponder some of history’s more famous bebuffs and take solace from the thought of how foolish these editors felt with the benefit of hindsight…

  • Agatha Christie suffered five full years of rejection before landing a publishing deal, then went on to become history’s second-biggest selling author (after William Shakespeare).

  • Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind was rejected 38 times.

  • A particularly nasty editor rejected Zane Grey thus: ‘You have no business being a writer and should give up.’ His Westerns went on to sell over 250 million copies.

  • The first Harry Potter novel was rejected 12 times before finally being published, leading JK Rowling to billionaire status.

  • ‘I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years,’ went one of the many rejections of Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov persevered and the book became a classic with sales of 50 million. For more encouragement, visit www.litrejections.com, where you can submit your own stories of woe and share the pain.

  Overcoming writer’s block

  Sometimes I get up in the morning and just can’t think of anything to write, or what I do write comes out all wrong. In my early writing days when this happened, I would while away an hour staring into the void – or clean the refrigerator for the 10th time or check yet again to see if the mail had come – but over the years I’ve found two techniques that help get the words flowing. The first is to write about my writer’s block:

  ‘Today, for some reason, I just can’t get started writing. I’m not sure why. I wonder if it’s because of the pizza I ate last night, or maybe it’s just because I don’t know how to get where I know I need to be in my story today. The problem is bringing that village back to life. Here’s what I remember…’ Suddenly, I’ve forgotten about my writer’s block and started writing my piece again.

  The second technique follows the model that John Steinbeck used when he wrote East of Eden. He kept a notebook. In the left-hand pages of the notebook he wrote a daily diary – this was his way of warming up his writing engine. In the right-hand pages of the same book he wrote the novel itself. I have adapted a version of this. If I simply can’t get going on my story, I start writing about whatever comes to mind – the Yosemite hike we did over the weekend, the Borges story I read the night before, the glistening cheesecake in the refrigerator, the Polynesian beach I wish I were lying on… I just start writing about whatever is occupying my mind, and somehow this unlocks me and liberates my imagination to get back into the story again.

  Writer’s tip: Digital earnings

  While the internet makes a career as a travel writer more viable – more and more people work as freelancers, liberated by technology from needing to report in at an office every day – the rewards are slim if you restrict your publication efforts to online publications. Overall, online writing rates overall are far lower than the rates commanded by print, and that’s when they pay at all – many websites don’t offer any compensation to writers at all.

  It’s standard practice for websites to pay a flat rate for an article rather than a per-word rate. Matador (matadornetwork.com), for example, pay $40 per story, Bootsnall (www.bootsnall.com) pay $50, The Expeditioner (www.theexpeditioner.com) pay $30. Given that websites are generally looking for first-personal travel narratives, of the type you need to put in significant time (and expense) both to research and to write, it’s difficult to see how the return on investment can work.

  While there are a few exceptions to this rather depressing rule (see pages 208–11 for a list of online opportunities), working purely for online publishers is very unlikely to provide anything more than the most meager income stream. But you might consider submitting your work to publications like this, if, for example, you want to build an online portfolio to help you pitch for print work, or simply to get some practice in writing for publication. It can also be useful if you’re a budding internet entrepreneur, looking to grow traffic and build an audience for your own blog. If you’re successful, you could join the growing ranks of travel bloggers who are making a decent living from their work.

  Making money as a travel writer

  If all the people on the planet who make a living solely from their travel writing (excluding travel guidebook writers) were brought together in one room, the room would not be crowded. Most of the guests at this globe-girdling gathering would write books for a living, and their income would be a mix of advance payments for their new books and royalties from their old ones, supplemented by a few travel magazine or newspaper pieces a year. There would be a decent handful who run a successful, profitable travel blog (although they’d have to admit they spend a relatively small proportion of their time actually writing, in among all the other promotional and entrepreneurial tasks it takes to keep a blog up and running). Only a very few would make a living exclusively from writing articles for magazines, newspapers and websites – there simply isn’t enough work to go around, and it just isn’t well paid enough.

  In today’s publishing world, many travel writers outlay their own time and money up front without any guarantee that they’ll ever see any money. Even if and when their article is finally published, if they were to calculate the hours that went into the travel, research and writing of the piece, they’d need a microscope to see their hourly wage.

  Another factor to consider is the lack of any freelancers’ retirement fund that will squirrel money away for you and dole it out after you’ve stopped wandering and scribbling. You have to do that yourself. Many travel writers in their fifties and sixties are only thinking about this now, and realizing that they should have started saving for this phase of life decades ago.

  It’s also worth saying that what was always a challenging way to make a living has become significantly more so in recent years. Money has flooded out of a travel writer’s traditional markets – newspapers and magazines – towards the intern
et. And while that has opened up many more opportunities to get published, those opportunities are almost always very poorly paid (unless, of course, you start your own online business and make it work).

  After hearing this strong dose of reality, how is your resolve to become a travel writer faring? It’s harsh, but it’s important that you’re realistic about the amount of money you can earn if you take this path. And if you’re still able and willing to try to make travel writing your primary source of income, more power to you.

  And good luck!

  A writer’s view: Daisann MacLane

  Daisann McLane wrote the ‘Frugal Traveler’ column for the New York Times travel section for six years, and the ‘Real Travel’ column for National Geographic Traveler magazine for 11 years. She currently lives in Hong Kong where she founded and runs a food and cultural walk company, www.littleadventuresinhongkong.com

  Be prepared to cut yourself loose and go on adventures. Go to places you adore, and immerse yourself in the people and their culture. Be open and humble. If someone invites you to come home with them and sleep on their floor, go. Put yourself in vulnerable situations and then come back home (or stay out there) and write marvelous stories. Do it because you love it, not because you see it as a way to make a fortune or be famous. Do it because you want to look back in 30 or 40 years on an amazing life lived.

  Learn another language. Two would be even better! Learning a foreign language is the best way to break through the wall between you and the place you are writing about. There’s a quantum difference between a piece that is written by a writer fluent in the language and culture, and a piece written by someone who’s just dropped in.

  Living abroad for a spell is another great way of stretching your imagination, and acquiring a different point of view that will set you apart from the rest of the would-be travel writers pitching stories. Studying and becoming expert at something that is identified or connected with another culture or place – say, for example, martial arts, or yoga, or French cooking – will give you an insider’s edge for an article about India, China or France.

  Over 20 years of writing, I’ve had four, maybe five editors who really clicked with me and understood and supported my writing. The editor makes all the difference in this work. When you find a good one, keep them in your life by any means possible. Remember their birthdays. Send chocolates from Belgium, silks from Vietnam. Offer them the name of your favorite massage therapist in Thailand.

  There’s no security in this career, and that can be really scary. On the other hand, when you travel to so many different places, and you see how people live outside of your little bubble, you realize how ridiculous the very idea of security is, from a global perspective. Empires come and go, personal fortunes rise and fall, the river waters flood and recede, and people somehow keep going. When I catch myself freaking out about my lack of a retirement plan, I slap myself back with a reality check: most people in the world don’t have anything to catch them if they fall except their will and their determination to press on.

  There are very few places left on earth nowadays that are truly inaccessible, and globalization has been so thorough and pervasive that the contrast between tradition and modernity has become almost a given. Now every traveler expects to attend video nights in Kathmandu. What’s more, in response to escalating numbers of tourists and the pressures of economic development, travel destinations themselves are becoming more and more faux (for example, in China, they tear down their traditional neighborhoods and move the vendors to new, Disney-like ‘Old Streets’).

  It’s going to be very interesting to see where the next generation of travel writers will find its subject in a world where, increasingly, all the urban centers are beginning to match each other – starchitect for starchitect – and where everything once marvelous has turned to faux. Here’s a thought: as economies shrink, oil diminishes, and travel becomes more costly and difficult, we travel writers may end up back in our 19th-century role as the eyes and ears of the armchair wanderer.

  Earnings in the UK

  Pay varies enormously in the UK, and how much you can earn in a year will depend on who you write for, how often your pieces are published, and how hard you work. As the quality newspapers have a weekly or biweekly travel section, freelance travel writers often find themselves writing more pieces for newspapers than for magazines, which are normally published monthly. Pay for newspaper articles varies from £300 to £650 per 1000 words; for travel magazines the rate ranges between £250 and £700 per 1000 words (of course, well-known writers or regular contributors are paid more). However, the length of a standard destination piece in the UK is around 1000–2000 words, so this needs to be factored in when you’re calculating how many articles you need to write to make a living. Sometimes you might be commissioned to write 3000 words or more, especially for a magazine, but it’s rare.

  Expenses are seldom paid on top of your article fee, because it is assumed you’ll be negotiating ‘freebies’ – trips arranged for low or no cost with airlines, hotels and other travel providers in return for coverage in the article you write, usually in the fact box (or sidebar, as it is called in the USA) accompanying your story. (The attitude towards freebies is very different in the USA, see pages 98–100.) Setting up these deals with airlines and hotels can take up a prodigious amount of your time. Of course, traveling also takes up a lot of your time, and days when you’re traveling are days when you are not earning – in effect, you are paid to write, not travel. This is why you need to write as many articles as you can from one trip.

  Another point to consider is that many articles are commissioned ‘on spec’ – this means that a travel editor has said they like the idea of what you might write but will only agree to run it (and pay you) once they have seen your copy. It is also much more difficult to negotiate free travel or accommodation with an ‘on spec’ piece as there are no guarantees of coverage for the service provider.

  Earnings in the USA

  Very few US-based freelance writers make more than $100,000 a year; the vast majority earn in the vicinity of $15,000–40,000 a year. A very good scenario would see you being lucky enough to receive six assignments from major magazines in one year. If each assignment was for an article of 3000 words, and the magazines paid an average of $1.50 a word, that would come to $4500 per story and a grand total of $27,000. That would be it, and you’d still have all your life expenses to cover, from housing and food to medical costs and phone bills. Unlike the situation in the UK, you would at least be compensated for any expenses incurred, but could you possibly survive on this amount?

  To be more realistic, few US magazines would pay $1.50 a word to a new writer. Top magazines would most likely start you at $1 a word for articles ranging from short pieces (250 words) published at the beginning of the magazine to longer features (4000 words) in the middle sections. Fifty cents a word would be more common. And some magazines pay dramatically less than this, down to 10 cents a word. Major newspapers pay considerably less than major magazines, with most of them paying between $200 and $500 for articles of 1000–2000 words.

  Earnings in Australia

  Making a living solely from travel writing is tough in a relatively small market such as the one in Australia. Most Australian newspapers pay a rate of 50 cents a word, rising to perhaps 70 cents if you’re very lucky. Features range from 1500 to 3000 words, and inside pieces vary between 700 and 1000 words. Metropolitan and smaller regional newspapers can pay a set fee of as little as AU$50. Magazines vary wildly, from a set fee of AU$350 to as much as AU$1 per word from the majors. As in the UK, expenses are rarely paid, reviewers for publications such as restaurant guides being the fortunate exception.

  Earnings from travel literature

  If you’re writing a literary travel book on contract you will at least get some money up front from the publishers – this is called an ‘advance’ and the publishers award it in the hope that sales of your book will recoup that sum and more. An ad
vance for your first book from a major publisher will probably be in the region of £10,000 in the UK, $15,000 in the USA or AU$20,000 in Australia, though there are plenty of first-time writers who have published a book for much less, and smaller publishers will pay correspondingly smaller advances. Unless you have a supplemental income, this advance will have to fund your travels and your general living expenses for the length of time it takes to research and write your book – generally one to two years. Of course, if your first book is a success and you want to write a second, the financial picture can brighten considerably.

  Writer’s tip: Striking the perfect balance

  While it may be disheartening to learn that following your dream career may not be compatible with a lifetime of financial security, it’s also worth considering how you might be able to have your cake and eat it too – whether that be a New York cronut, a Paris millefeuille or an Istanbul baklava. While writing about travel (especially online) may be under-rewarded, other types of writing – that you can often do freelance, and remotely – are well paid, and if you’re prepared to be pragmatic it’s possible to put together a portfolio of jobs that allow you to earn a decent living, and still spend time doing what you love.

  Rates for copywriting are generally good (up to $100 per hour), especially if you can prove your worth, and online job marketplaces like Upwork allow you to jobsearch from your sunbed or favorite cafe terrace (WiFi permitting). You can choose when – and from where – you work, meaning that you can structure your life around travel and split your time between your travel writing and your more lucrative work. Certainly, while you’re starting out, it’s a good way to mitigate risk and give yourself the chance to get your travel writing career off the ground.