Great Escape Publishing

Posted October 8th, 2009 by Bonnie Caton & filed under Travel Writing.

Dear Reader,

This week’s Featured Publication is Holidays for Couples. It’s an Australian magazine that pays for stories and photos about great places to honeymoon or travel as a couple.

Scroll down for details…

— Bonnie

Bonnie Caton
Great Escape Publishing

P.S. If Australia is on your radar, now is the time to think about going. Airline ticket prices are VERY low — and who knows how long that will last.

Holidays for Couples: Double Your Pay by Getting Published Abroad

Holidays for Couples is a big, glossy publication in Australia that focuses on one thing: romantic destinations for a couples getaway.

It’s only published twice a year. But that’s no reason to leave it off your list of magazines to approach.

Here’s why:

** 1. If you live in a picture-perfect honeymoon destination, or you know about one, then this Australian publication would like to hear from you.

** 2. You can break in with small, 100-200 word spa or hotel review articles.

** 3. Holidays for Couples buys First Australian Rights to your story… which means you can almost certainly submit the very same story to a different publication in the U.S., U.K., or elsewhere. Even if you need to tweak the story slightly to fit a different audience, you’ll still double your income for half the work.

Here are a few tips to help you break in:

— Over 80% of Holidays for Couples readers are female. Half of them are planning a honeymoon. The other half are seniors living in double-income households, looking for romantic vacations now that the kids are grown and gone. And while most readers are from Australia, the magazine covers destinations the world over, including the U.S. and Canada.

— Readers are also couples, so keep that in mind when you sit down to write your story. Once it’s written, read it with an eye to whether you’ve talked enough about what there is for both halves of a couple to do.

— High-quality photos to go with your story will give you a big boost.

— Each article comes with a sidebar that Holidays for Couples calls a “Fact File.” It includes information on how to get there, visa requirements, climate, currency, and other useful facts. Make sure to put one together for your article before sending it in. You can see a sample Fact File on the Writer’s Guidelines page (link below).

Pay for articles is 40 Australian cents (about 36 U.S. cents) per word. So if you break in with a short 200-word hotel or restaurant review, you could make $72 for four little paragraphs. And then, as I suggested earlier, you could sell that article again in the U.S. and get paid for it a second time.

Pay for photos ranges from AU$30 to AU$160 (about $27 to $142 U.S.). If you have photos, you’ll need to send high-resolution TIFF or JPG files on CD, and include captions for each shot.

Freelance writer Jennifer Stevens (author of our Ultimate Travel Writer’s Program), often suggests that the best way to break into a big, glossy magazine like Holidays for Couples is with a small, “front-of-the-book” article. You can do that by submitting 100- to 200-word travel tip articles to the Globe Trotting section, or 250-word resort spa reviews to the Spa Focus section.

** TIP: Reviews of couples massages are a plus. (If you came with us to Ecuador this summer and went for the couples massage at the Relais and Chateau hotel and spa… here’s your opportunity to write it up! If you’re curious what I’m talking about, check out the Ecuador workshop details.)

Holidays for Couples also publishes up to seven destination-driven feature articles in each issue: one from the Americas, Europe, or Indian Ocean, two from Asia and the Pacific Islands, and up to four from Australia. These run between 1,200 and 2,500 words long. You’ll find more information on story types and how and where to submit your articles or queries in the Writer’s Guidelines.

Of course, before you write or pitch anything to Holidays for Couples, don’t forget to read through some of the stories on the website to get a feel for the content.

[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.]