Great Escape Publishing

Posted November 20th, 2009 by Bonnie Caton & filed under Travel Photography, Travel Writing.

Dear Reader,

Yesterday, I sent you the low-down on how to get your article and photos published in International Living, with exclusive insights from Editor Laura Sheridan.

I thought it fitting to feature International Living yesterday because our very own reader and past workshop attendee, Ray Batson, has an article coming out in the December issue of IL.

Congratulations, Ray!

Take a sneak-peek at his article (and amazing photos) about his trip to Antarctica as they’ll appear in the print issue of the magazine.

Ray’s been writing and taking photos for a long time. A planetary cartographer in his past life (he helped develop the map-making techniques used to chart and study other planets), he published more than a hundred technical papers and reports in scientific journals and atlases. But getting his travel articles published was a different thing altogether – though, I think you could argue, an easier task.

Ray already had a knack for writing and, more readily, photography… but it was at our travel writing and photography workshops that he collected all the insider know-how he needed to put a saleable article/photo package together. So when he sat down to put this International Living article together, he simply applied the secrets he’d picked up… and they did the trick.

To help you start down the same path toward getting your writing and photos published, I asked Jennifer Stevens, freelance writer and author of The Ultimate Travel Writer’s Program, what Ray did particularly well in positioning and crafting his article.

Apply Jen’s tips to your own projects, and you can’t go wrong. Here’s what she said:

“First, Ray sent not just the body copy of the article, but also a good selection of photos as well as a sidebar that contained useful how-to information. That gave the editor lots of graphic-design options. Editors like that flexibility. Also, he wrote to the required word-count — he didn’t write hundreds of words over, forcing the editor to waste valuable time cutting text. All these things make an editor’s job easier. That’s what you, as a freelancer, want to do.

“Next, Ray geared his article to a specific department in the magazine — IL’s travel column. In addition, he has the correct readership in mind. His subject matter works for the audience, which is predominantly over 50 years old. And while IL likes to use this space for ‘adventure’ of a sort, it’s not the same variety of adventure as, say, bungee jumping in New Zealand. The editor is looking for comfortable, accessible ways to experience and learn about unusual places. And that’s exactly what this article talks about. He’s right on target with his audience.

“And finally, Ray opened his article with a strong lead. It puts the reader in the middle of the action immediately. He doesn’t make the mistake many new writers do of telling the story from the beginning. He doesn’t start with, ‘We were on a cruise to Antarctica.’ Instead, he begins with, ‘Icy cliffs and snowy mountains tower above us. A reddish alga stains snowy slopes, and huge fractured ice cliffs of white and blue and green dwarf our ship…’”

Tomorrow, you’ll hear from Ray about what it was like getting published in IL… where else he’s been published lately… and a few more tips you can use to follow in his footsteps.

— Bonnie

Bonnie Caton
Great Escape Publishing

[Editor’s Note: Learn more about opportunities to profit from your travels (and even from your own home) in our free online newsletter The Right Way to Travel.]