Finding Travel Magazine Leads
on Vendor Websites

Travel writers always need to be looking for magazine leads. During my years as a travel writer, I have created my own ‘universal’ travel magazine distribution list.  It’s enormous, with 500 magazines of all stripes that accept travel articles for publication.

I’m always keeping my eyes open for new magazines to add to this list.

In a previous article, I showed you one way to locate magazines to pitch your travel stories to, using the Internet.

Here's another way to locate potential magazines online: magazine vendor lists.  For a long time I didn’t tell anyone about this because I thought everyone was doing it.

Well, it turns out that hardly any other travel writers utilize this valuable resource, and many have been surprised when I mention it to them.

What’s it all about?

Online magazine vendors unwittingly provide us with nice lists of hundreds of magazines—for free!  The magazines you glean from vendor listings make excellent additions to your master distribution list.

With magazine vendor lists there is homework involved.  The lists, as they appear on the vendor listings, do not give you direct access to the information travel writers need, such as editor’s name and contact details & writer’s guidelines.  But they provide you with an entry point.

All you have to do is follow the link to the magazine’s website.  Once you’re there, you look up the editor’s name and contact details and scan through the writer’s guidelines.  Voila! 

Magazine vendor lists are portals to a treasure trove of magazine leads.

It’s worth noting that magazine vendor lists are not comprehensive.  They do not have every magazine in the genre you are researching.  Despite this, I have always discovered a few magazines on vendor lists that I haven’t uncovered through my other search techniques.  I’m sure you will, too.

3 Places to Find Travel Magazine Leads

www.Magazines.com

Since 1999 Magazines.com has been the trusted online source for magazine subscriptions.  As you can see from the screen shot above, there’s a huge selection here from history to international magazines, and from lifestyle to home & gardening.

http://www.magazine-agent.com

Similar to magazine.com, you can browse magazines on this website by category.  And there's a huge selection of categories. 

Magazine categories listed on this website include: cooking, food & beverage, history, home & garden, photography, science & nature, travel & regional, and women’s magazines.

There are 104 magazines listed under ‘Travel & Regional'!

http://www.amazon.com/Magazines-Journals-Kindle

Seattle-based amazon.com continues its mission to take over the world, by selling magazine subscriptions.  You’ll find a huge selection of magazine genres on amazon.com including travel & adventure.

But wait, there’s more!

Before you go charging off to hunt down travel magazines at these websites, I have a couple more great magazine lead sources for you.

www.Issuu.com is a digital platform network that creates and publishes magazines online.  Dozens of them, hundreds of them, thousands of them!

It’s a cross between a magazine archive, a library, and a newsstand. It’s fun scrolling through their mind-blowing selection of magazines looking for potential recruits for your travel distribution list.  And you can even open the magazines and read them.

In a half hour scrolling session, I found the following travel magazines: View Travel & Lifestyle, Best in Travel, Travelite, Experience Travel & Living, Good Mood Travel, and Travel Ideas.

whopayswriters.com  is a useful website that lists a large number of magazines, newspapers and online e-zines, and what they pay to freelance writers.

Each post is from writers who have written for a particular magazine with details about word length and rate of pay. Some posts list how long it took the editor to pay up, and a few note the rights the magazine buys.

The magazines and newspapers are listed alphabetically, so if you're looking for specific publications they're easy to find.   There are multiple entries for many of the magazines listed here.  This is a good thing: you get a better overall ‘feel’ for the magazine and what it pays from multiple listings.

The magazine genres run the whole gambit from high rollers (Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, New York Times, Harper’s) to women’s magazines (Elle, to political magazines (The Nation) and practically every other genre you can think of (Outside, Music, Daily Beast, Tablet, Huffington Post, Psychology Today, Scientific American, Wired).

The pay rates range from a few cents/word to $2/word. There’s something here for everyone, from beginning freelance writers to well-published veteran writers who just target higher paying magazines.

The Best Search Process for Magazine Leads

Use Multiple Techniques

I’m a proponent of using multiple techniques to locate potential magazine targets for your queries. I wrote about this in a previous article: how to find sales leads for your travel stories.

Use Writers Guidelines

I’ve also written an article about using writers guidelines to sell your stories.  Writer’s Market and similar publications should always form the foundation for your searches.

Go to Bookstores

Another source of magazine leads is by browsing the magazine racks at newsagents and large bookstores. Magazine racks carry new publications so you should always be looking for leads here.

Use the Internet

The Internet is a boon to travel writers.  It provides us with instant information, at our fingertips, and makes research tasks like tracking down travel magazines much faster and easier.

An Internet search using the magazine’s genre as the keyword (e.g. travel magazines, boating magazines, etc.) also reaps good rewards.

Use Magazine Websites/Vendor Lists

And now, to your arsenal, you can add magazine leads from vendor lists.

The magazine leads on vendor websites mentioned in this article will help you increase your travel magazine distribution lists. All you need to do is spend some time on these websites getting the pertinent information.  And it’s free!  The only cost is your time.

Combining all these sources will help you build extensive magazine distribution lists. So get out there, check them out and beef up your lists so you can place your story ideas more easily and sell more articles.

If you want to get published in print media, 100 Print Magazines that Want to Publish Your Travel Stories gives you a ready-made a list of print magazines with contact details, writers guidelines, and much more. 

Learn more ...

Related Articles that Will Interest You:

Getting Published:  The Many Ways to Sell Your Stories
Finding Magazine Sales Leads for Travel Writing
Using Writers Guidelines to Sell Your Articles
6 Best Resources for Magazine Leads
100 Print Magazines that Want to Publish Your Travel Articles eBook

Roy Stevenson is a professional travel writer and the author of www.PitchTravelWrite.com.  Over the past ten years, he’s had more than 1000 articles published in 200 magazines, trade and specialty journals, in-flights, on-boards, blogs and websites and has traveled on assignment around the U.S. and to dozens of international destinations.