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Issue #428: Nine Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Pitch January 30, 2023 |
| Greetings Fellow Travel Writers! . . . and WELCOME all new subscribers. Thanks for joining us.
2023 Workshop NewsWe’re very excited to announce our upcoming Travel Writing & Photography Retreat and our Marketing Master Class for Travel Writers, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, May 21-26, 2023.If you’re thinking about attending these workshops, here are a few things to consider: • If you’re looking for workshops where you will get ALL your questions answered - from pitching and selling your travel articles to requesting complimentary travel, these workshops are for you. • If you want to leap past all the beginner writer’s mistakes with query letters, editors, and the myriad other hurdles that crop up in freelance travel writing, these workshops are for you. These are not just your everyday, run-of-the-mill travel-writing workshops that solely focus on the craft of travel writing. Those travel writing workshops overlook one huge detail: if you can’t sell your articles, you don’t get to write them! We will show you, step-by-step, how to sell your stories. These aren’t workshops for dreamers -– they’re for people who want to get out there and do it. It’s for writers who are dedicated to selling their travel stories in 2023. This year our destination workshops will be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations. If you want to really see how far you can go, these are the travel writing workshops for you. Please note — workshop size is limited to 25 people. If you enjoy learning in a small, supportive atmosphere, these workshops are for you. If you want to learn the writing and selling tricks, techniques, and tradecraft to become a successful freelance travel writer, place your name on our no-obligation workshop interest list, below. You’ll get a special insider offer & a large discount off the course fees.
Santa Fe is an outstanding place for a destination workshop! We had so much fun looking around last month. This beautiful city of 83,000 punches well above its weight for tourist attractions. It has great restaurants, fascinating history and culture, museums, creative art galleries, enticing boutique shops, and other interesting attractions to keep travel journalists entertained for a solid week. Best of all, it’s easily walkable! The Santa Fe CVB is giving our travel writing workshop attendees a VIP Tourist Pass to explore the city and find story ideas. This means you’ll get complimentary entry to …
Here’s the link to our no-obligation interest list: Featured PostNine Questions to Ask Yourself Before You PitchDo you have a salable travel story idea? How can you write travel stories that magazine editors will want to buy?Figuring out what editors are interested in seems like a mystery, but it doesn’t have to be. Time is your most valuable asset when you’re a freelance writer. And pitching weak story ideas is a massive time waster. Think about it. You spend hours researching your topic. Then you spend time writing a query letter and finding potential magazines to pitch. If your story is rejected for publication, all that time goes down the drain. And, rejection causes a dent in your morale — especially for novice travel writers. You can save yourself time and stress when dreaming up new story ideas by using this screening technique. It examines the feasibility of your story ideas and turns them into successful travel stories that get published. I call it the "Nine Questions Test.”
Upcoming PostsFeb 6: Where to Pitch Your Travel StoriesFeb 13: Query Multiple Travel Story Ideas and Multiply Your Sales Feb 20: How to Get Published and Make Money Here's Who Joined Us in Charleston SC for Our Travel Writing & Photography Retreat and Our Marketing Master Class For Travel Writers
Bonnie McKenna . . .
. . . I'm a California girl. Grew up in a children’s home, went to public school, rode horses, took road trips and learned to scuba dive. Martin and Osa Johnson travel logs — the original travel writer, photographer, movie making team — enthralled me. I knew traveling the world was in my life. While in college I joined the Peace Corps. I spent the next two years in Thailand working as a parasitologist doing malaria surveys and working in the local hospital. After Peace Corps, life seemed too tame so I took a job with Project Concern at a rural hospital in the highlands of Vietnam. I came home when the war got too close. Continental Airlines was hiring flight attendants. Perfect. Finally, after thirty-five years of walking the aisles across the world, I retired. My writing career started with the Houston Community Newspapers as a stringer. I moved on to the Tribune newspaper as a travel writer for the next five years. Currently, I freelance for Scuba H2O Adventure Magazine, X-Ray Dive E-zine and have also been published in TravelWorld International Magazine. For a complete list of bios from our 2022 Charleston Workshop participants, follow this link and scroll down . . .
Inspirational Travel Quote
Pitch Travel Write: Most Requested Links About Researching Your Travel DestinationsMost travel story ideas are worthy of publication somewhere. If you spend some quality time researching your destination you can usually find a marketable story idea or two. You just need to do a little work to discover what’s so interesting about a place and to clarify your unique story angle.It takes some experience to know what constitutes a viable travel story. And deciding whether a story idea is a dog or a shooting star is an important first step in the pitching process. So where, and how, do travel writers start their quest for a salable story? Here are 6 tips to help you. Over the past couple of years, I’ve received several desperate requests from novice travel writers, asking me to help them round up some last-minute assignments, so they can request complimentary accommodations, meals, entry to tourist attractions, rounds of golf, fishing trips, boat cruises, and a host of other freebies, at their destinations. There’s only one problem with these requests — they’ve all been expecting to round up some travel assignments from a few days to a week or two before they leave for their destination!
Here's an article I wrote for Travel Writers Exchange about pre-planning and how to do it for the best benefits.
MORE RESOURCES FOR TRAVEL WRITERSFeatured Book of the Month:125 Websites that Want to Publish Your Travel Stories
Our updated eBook, 125 Websites that Want to Publish Your Travel Stories, is a red-hot list of quality websites that are eager to publish your travel articles.
And, you can make some money while you’re boosting your bylines. Our latest book includes more than 50 travel websites that actually PAY their writers!
This reference book for travel writers is one of the most valuable resources you can have in your toolbox. You won’t find a list like this anywhere else. The list of 125 websites - and the advice in this eBook — is your short cut to success. It will accelerate your travel writing career by rapidly enhancing your online presence.
Latest News eBooksNew eBooks Coming SoonWe’re about to publish another eBook to help you get your travel stories published. It’s called The Best of Roy’s Blogs: Roy’s Solutions for Selling More Travel Stories, Writing Better, and Earning More Money. You need to have a lot of skills to be successful in the freelance travel writing game. In the past fifteen years I’ve been bombarded with hundreds of email questions about many aspects of travel writing. The blogs you’re about to read are my succinct answers to these urgent questions. These blogs are gathered from my email replies, Facebook posts, LinkedIn posts, blogs, and newsletter editorials. They provide quality solutions in summary form to the myriad challenges travel writers face. Even better, at the end of each blog I give you the link to a more detailed and comprehensive coverage of each topic so you can continue on to a more in-depth post on our website PitchTravelWrite.com. Follow the advice dispensed in this eBook and you’ll earn more from your travel writing by selling more stories and improving your travel writing. We’re excited to announce that we’ve finished the draft of our ebook 500 Print Magazines That Want To Publish Your Travel Articles. Rather than revise our current eBook, “100 Print Magazines That Want To Publish Your Travel Articles” we decided to write an entirely new book. We’ve tossed out the magazines that have folded since the 2016 edition and added in a whopping 450 NEW magazines (maybe more) to this eBook. Yes, you read that right! This compilation is far more specialized for travel writers than what you’ll find in Writer’s Market. Compiled over fifteen years from a wide variety of online sources, field resources, and book references, this comprehensive list includes international publications for the English-speaking market. The magazine lists include . . .
Watch this newsletter for release dates soon to be announced. Group Coaching Registration is ClosedWe'd love to have you in the next session starting in Q2 2023.If you want to get on our Interest List, follow the link below . . .
Did You Know . . .Our Complete Marketing Master Class for Travel Writers is ranked #1 on TravelWritersExchange.com’s Top Ten Travel Writing Workshops.Your next opportunity to attend these classes will be in 2023, in Santa Fe (see top of this newsletter). Our travel writing & marketing workshops are highly informative and a blast, socially. Get on our interest list for updates:
At Your ServiceCoaching
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Consulting PitchTravelWrite.com, is our information-packed website for travel writers. This e-zine, a series of travel writing books and reference guides, coaching programs, and our workshops all work together to give you guidance in this field. Our aim is to provide you with practical, nitty gritty information to help you gain entry into the travel writing realm and all the enjoyment that comes with it.
Awards and AccoladesWe're thrilled to announce that our website, PitchTravelWrite.com has made The Write Life.com’s list of 100 BEST WEBSITES FOR WRITERS for 2020 and 2021!You can see the entire list by visiting their website - click on the graphic to view the list now.
We're proud to announce that our travel writing website, PitchTravelWrite.com has made Writer’s Digest Magazine’s 2016, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 101 BEST WEBSITES FOR WRITERS. Writer's Digest doesn’t bestow these awards lightly. And we’re the only travel writing website on their lists!
And the accolades for PitchTravelWrite.com just keep pouring in! Our website helps travel writers successfully sell their travel stories. Thank you, Writer’s Digest Magazine for listing us on your “Best Genre/Niche Websites for 2020, 2021 and 2022.”
Friend me on FacebookMy Facebook page is about freelance travel writing. I frequently post about:• links to other well produced travel websites and blogs • links to my travel articles • magazine cover stories and back stories • links to resource pages • links to coaching and mentoring resources . . .and plenty of other useful information to get you up to speed Link to Roy's Personal Facebook page That's all for now. Until next week - just keep pitching! Roy Roy Stevenson |
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To host our workshops, we’ve found a southwestern style, luxury hotel located near the heart of the historic downtown area, the Hotel Santa Fe Hacienda and Spa. The workshops will be held from May 21st through May 26th. We’ll be releasing more hotel details and workshop dates in this newsletter over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!
