"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.
