Summary"Any good writer can earn three times back what it costs
them to travel; on the other hand, nobody can really teach
another person how to write," says Gordon Burgett. "Yet an
experienced journalist can explain what must appear on the
page to see print almost every time and to earn its writer
a healthy, reliable income. It's all a matter of meeting an
editor's need, and that process is predictable.
Particularly so in the case in travel writing."
Twice before Gordon wrote the Travel Writer's Guide, and
both times it sold widely and was a Writer's Digest Book
Club top choice. But things are different in 2002 from 1997. Computers are
the rule rather than the exception, queries letters are as
often e-mailed or faxed as sent by regular mail, and
digital photography is on the verge of becoming the
standard. Still, most of the same old needs prevail: tight
prose, sharp insights, replicable how-to guidelines, and
fresh perspectives. So Gordon markedly revised the second
edition to include the new while keeping the best of the
old. What is different about Burgett's writing? There are other,
good travel writing books around (as he acknowledges in his
bibliography) but none with the same hands-on, step-by-step
thoroughness learned through his writing and selling 1,700
articles (most in travel) to the major magazines and
newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. Nor is there a book with the same writer-to-reader
immediacy that Burgett gains some 40 times a year when he
offers his much-sought, four-hour "Writing Travel Articles
That Sell!" seminar nationwide. So what one reads in the
Travel Writer's Guide is what Burgett does, publishes, and
talks about. And nobody else shares as much of the fun of traveling,
writing about it, and selling it! (The appendix also may be worth the price of the book
itself: 365 ideas for travel trips!) So Gordon is back talking about querying, trip planning,
market selection, topic prioritization, logistics, how
magazines differ from newspapers, income taxes,
documentation, keeping fun in the trip plan, cameras and
photo submission, how to sell the same article many times...
the same old stuff and more, from a brand new perspective. "It's hard to beat the travel writer's trifecta: a fun
trip, getting paid to tell (and show) others about it, and
deducting the expenses on your 1040. My book lets others
join in by doing the whole process from the outset," says
Burgett.
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