All Posts Tagged: magazines
27 Magazines Looking for Special Interest Travel Articles
We’ve talked before about how zeroing in on what interests you most as a travel writer can help you power up your travel writing career quickly, and the fact that most successful travel writers have several of these different major and micro niches.
But where are all these special interest publications looking for travel articles hiding?
What You Need to Know About Freelance Travel Writing Contracts
If you’ve already been in this game for a while, feel free to skip this post. I am not a lawyer (though that was my original career plan back in the day!), just a concerned citizen, so if you are already commanding the rates you deserve and negotiating for contract terms that work in your favor, jump ahead.
How Can You Tell Which Editor to Pitch at a Travel Magazine?
When I talk to freelance travel writers about their biggest issues in pitching a lot of people talk about the difficulty in finding the right editor to pitch.
Writers fear that if they send a stellar pitch to the wrong editor it will get deleted, simply because of irrelevance, before they even get their chance to shine and sell their idea and their writing abilities.
How Long Does it Take Magazine Editors to Respond to Travel Article Pitches?
One of my favorite quotes of all time from a magazine editor came from Peter Fish, at the time editor-at-large for Sunset magazine, a major newsstand publication in the Western U.S.
At the Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference in 2015, someone asked a panel of editors how long it takes them to respond to a pitch.
What Are Travel Magazine Editors Really Doing All Day?
I have the greatest respect for the amount of work on travel magazine editors’ plates (and not just because I used to be an editor).
How to Analyze a Magazine to Ensure Successful Pitches
One of the first things I teach aspiring print travel writers (especially the ones come over from blogging or copywriting) is how to break down a magazine.
You need to take it from a pile of glossy paper that you put on a pedestal or can’t imagine seeing your own humble words in to a framework of component parts that is built from the ground up every month.
Are You Missing Out on 80% of the Travel Magazines Out There?
It truly boggles my mind when travel writers (or aspiring travel writers) tell me that they aren’t pitching magazines because they don’t know who/where/what to pitch for three big reasons:
(1) The money they are missing out on could be a huge game changer for their freelance income.
(2) If you know how to analyze a magazine, the ideas come on their own. (And if you can’t get a hold of the magazine, we can help you with that too.)
(3) There are thousands of magazines out there looking for travel articles.
How to Get Yourself an Ongoing Travel Writing Gig This Week
Before we launch into how, exactly, to set yourself up with a steady stream of travel writing work, I want to look at some reasons why having a recurring travel writing job is so, so important. Especially for people who are either:
- just starting out as travel writers
- struggling to have a sustainable travel writing income even after many months or years at it (and with a healthy pile of clips to their names)
“Normal” Travel Writing Pay Rates
Post “Great Depression of Publishing,” it’s a little difficult to call any freelance rates normal.
I had one writing coach once tell me, when I said that I maintained an hourly rate of at least $100 with all of my work:
Even before I stopped pitching, my hourly rate magazine work was never less than $250 per hour.
A Quick Way to Find Out If a Magazine Pays (Well)
When you pitch a magazine that hasn’t been referred to you as a viable market by another freelancer or been verified in a magazine database like Mediabistro’s How to Pitch guides, Wooden Horse Publishing (now sadly deceased), or the Dream of Travel Writing Travel Magazine Database, you can run into a real problem.
You get an assignment. You write the article. And then you find out the magazine pays peanuts.