Breaking into Travel writing

This is a reply I wrote to an email I received at my MySpace Travel Writing and Photography page recently.  I wanted to share it with you here at TeachStreet.

Breaking into Travel writing

Eric:

Sorry I lost track of you message for a bit but finally remembered to answer your questions.

Travel writing is a bit easier to break into than travel photography so that is the good news.  Generally if you can do both the photography and writing you can begin getting published more quickly.

Major newspapers were once the best places to break into travel writing but these days the travel sections are nearly defunct.  They now buy very little freelance material.  The best places to break in now are online.  The problem with online is both the payment rates and getting your work seen among the hundreds of online travel sites is difficult.

My best advice to you is to start close to home, both in terms of locations to write about and also in looking for publication outlets.  See if your local city magazine needs some travel pieces or even your neighborhood newspaper (neighborhood newspapers are doing much better than the large city newspapers).  Target some nearby attractions that people often travel to your area to visit and write about them (collect photos too).  Especially in these tough economic times in the travel industry more people are looking nearby for their vacation destinations. Therefore publications are looking to domestic destination for much of their material for publication.

If you are not wanting to be paid for your writing there are hundreds of travel sites out there willing to let you post your travel writing on their sites as content for free.  Be warned that if you begin providing content for free the site is very unlikely to begin paying you for material later on in the future even if they dangle the "when we begin to show a profit we'll pay our writers" carrot in front of you. 

Lastly find good travel writing and read it. Then try to emulate this style while you develop your own style. Depending upon your writing experience you may also want to take some general creative writing courses.

 I would chose mainstream travel print publications and books as the best place to look for quality travel writing initially.  The reason being is on the web there is often very little editing, proofreading, or gate-keeping on these publications.  There is little guarantee of quality online.  The expense of print publications helps insure a higher level of quality in most cases.  It is not to say there are not great online publications and that everything in print is somehow superior,  It is just that since the process is more costly and difficult there is more oversight before the text is published in the print industry.

I hope this helps.  If you have specific questions please send them to me and I'll answer if I can.

Regards,

Jerome