Dream of Travel Writing’s 12 Days of Christmas

Today’s holiday trivia: December 29 is the main official holiday in Mongolia, marking the day the country obtained independence from China in 1921. To commemorate the holiday, Mongolians hold the largest wrestling match of the year. In Mongolian culture, wrestling is one of their “three manly skills,” the English name for the trifecta of wrestling, archery, and horsemanship. Wrestling is regarded as the most important of the three, and it is said that Genghis Khan considered wrestling to be an important way to keep his army in good physical shape and combat ready.

Today’s holiday special is very different than anything we’ve offered in the past. You don’t actually even pay us for it!

I’ve hinted about this offer in our newsletter earlier this week and earlier in December on our blog when I announced what I would be speaking on at the Women in Travel Summit this year, and it’s time.

We’ve put together something very different from our usual 12 days deals today that centers around the conference.

Every year I attend (seriously) dozens of conferences to speak, sponsor, or stay up on what is going on in all the different sections of the industry that affect our readers, event attendees and program members: destination marketing at the tourism board level, travel blogging, non-fiction book publishing, the magazine industry, the world of company content marketing, and, of course, the latest in running and greatest tips on running a freelance business.

And when people ask me which one is worth going to, I always say WITS without hesitation.

It’s simply the best event I know currently of any kind for surrounding yourself with inspiring content creators who are working hard toward their goals and can light up paths you’ve never considered for how to achieve yours.

The interesting thing is, while the event is run by women with all female speakers, it is also open for men to register as well, and there are always a handful in attendance.

I’ve attended for four years now, spoken for three, and sponsored the event for two, and each year, I am inspired by the huge leaps I see from one conference to the next in the travel writing careers of those I meet there every year.

So this year, we’ve decided to take a bigger sponsorship role in the event, and we’re offering this very unusual holiday special to celebrate–including a special meet & greet and dinner where you can get to know other attendees so you have friends going into the event!

Here’s the schedule:

• Thursday, May 2: Tours & Excursions + Dream of Travel Writing Private Dinner and Meet and Greet (exclusively for those who grab this holiday special, and with a special guest–the editor of the Travel Magazine Database, who is coming in from London for this year’s WITS!)
• Friday, May 3: Blogger 101 Day Sessions, Opening Session, Regular Sessions, Opening Party
• Saturday, May 4: Opening Keynote, Regular Sessions, Power Networking
• Sunday, May 5: Regular Sessions, Closing Keynote, Tours & Excursions, Closing Party & Awards Ceremony

Between included tours (there’s also two more days of tours available before the conference on Tues the 30th and  Wednesday the 1st and after the conference on Monday the 6th and Tuesday the 7th), speed networking opportunities, and always pragmatic sessions, you will get a lot out of this event.

For the holiday special, we’re going to make sure you are 100% ready to make the most of the event by adding on:

• one 30-minute coaching call with Gabi prior to the conference to get crystal clear on your goals for the event so that you can rock it
• a seat at our private dinner and meet and greet with other travel writers and the editor of our Travel Magazine Database the evening before the conference begins
• our one-hour webinar on “The Secrets of Six-Figure Travel Writers”
• our one-hour webinar on “How to Build Serious Partnerships at Travel Conferences”
• our one-hour webinar on “How to Break Your Trips into the Maximum Number of Article Ideas”
• our one-hour webinar on “How to Earn Big with Travel Content Marketing”

Here’s how it works:

• Grab your ticket to the women in travel summit through this link. (If you’ve purchased a ticket to the event already, check out the information on what to do in that case below).
• Drop the details of your ticket, your name, and the email where you’d like to receive your resources in this Google form.
• Get your webinars by email.
• Set up your coaching call before the Women in Travel Summit with the instructions you’ll receive by email.
• Join us for dinner on Thursday, May 2, 2019, and find your conference buddy.
• Have an awesome WITS!

Delivery details:

• You must purchase your ticket to WITS through this unique link before midnight EST tonight for the offer to be valid.
• Your webinars will arrive by email once you’ve completed the Google form with your WITS ticket number.
• For your coaching call, you’ll receive an email at the beginning of January letting you know how to set up your call, and you’ll get a reminder each month before the conference until we get your call scheduled.
• For the pre-conference dinner, we’ll send out details on the timing and location of the meal and meet and greet the week before the event.
• Already have a ticket to WITS that you purchased earlier? No worries. We have got you covered. To square up with everyone else and take advantage of this offer, you can just pay a small fee here ($15) to square up with the affiliate commission those purchasing today are paying and then forward your original WITS ticket confirmation email to questions@dreamoftravelwriting.com so we know you have a ticket. The organizers allow speakers to earn extra money on the event through an affiliate program, but I always prefer to offer my portion of the ticket fee to you all in the form of a discount. I was able to do it two years ago, but they don’t have the facility to offer discount codes to speakers or sponsors for us to offer you discounted tickets, only an affiliate program, so those who have registered today have put $15 in the form of an affiliate payment towards the dinner we’ll hold the night before the conference and the bonuses they’ve received. For those who have already purchased a ticket, we ask you to contribute the same $15 to Dream of Travel Writing to be eligible for the bonuses for this holiday special. All the usually holiday special rules still apply here, so if you already have a WITS ticket and want to take advantage of this offer, you still need to pay the fee through this link and forward your WITS receipt before midnight EST for the special to be valid.

This offer has ended. Thank you!

Today’s holiday trivia: Kwanzaa’s week-long celebration from December 26 to January 1 honors African heritage in African-American culture. Created in 1966 by secular humanist Maulana Karenga as a specifically African-American holiday, Kwanzaa is observed in the U.S. and in other nations of the African diaspora and culminates in a feast and gift-giving. While observers of Kwanzaa initially avoided the mixing of the holiday or its symbols, values, and practice with other holidays, today, many African American families celebrate Kwanzaa along with Christmas and New Year’s.

Whenever I work with writers on their pitches (longer pieces of writing as well, but particularly in succinct formats like query letters), we spend at least one-third of the time on the concept of “journalistic detail.”

(And this is keeping in mind that the single biggest issue with most pitches that I see is having an idea that actually fits the magazine you’re pitching, the length of the article you’ve proposed, the format of the section of the magazine you’ve selected, and the audience of the magazine you’ve got in mind!)

In the past year, I’ve come to realize that once you’ve nailed the crucial working of understanding what is a good article idea and how to match them to magazines correctly, the only thing that stands in the way of having a 90%+ pitch response rate is this “journalistic detail” concept.

I had to make up the name, because I couldn’t find anyone else talking about it, but it’s been a fundamental part of the lessons in our Freelance Travel Writing Bootcamp for years.

The idea is: your (pitch) writing for print magazines must be replete with details that are:

• evocative and vivid
• the end-of-the-line of precision for the point at hand
• directly tied into and supporting the point of your pitch (this is one of the hardest parts)

Anything less shows the editor you’re pitching what they call “lazy reporting” and immediately inches your email closer and closer to the three dreaded final resting places of unrequited pitches:

1. The dark valley of “I’ll have to think about it and look at it again,” also known as “maybe purgatory”
2. The desert of “I don’t really think so, but I won’t respond ‘no,’ just in case”
3. The sticky, unyielding swamp of “I’m too big deal of an editor to bother with anything but the best”

Because I spend so much time working with writers on their journalistic detail chops, I put together a series of five one-hour webinars solely dedicated to this topic–for contrast, I did one fewer on writing the behemoth and obviously career-changing non-fiction book proposal!

We have only offered these webinars to members of our coaching and Dream Buffet programs until today, but now, as part of our 12 days of holiday specials, we’re offering you the first chance to get your hands on them for 75% of the regular pricing.

At the regular price ($19 each), this much content would typically set you back more than $90, because all of the webinars from our library come with:

• streamable high-def video
• smaller downloadable video
• streamable and downloadable audio file
• full transcript available to read on screen or as a PDF download
• all webinar slides in PDF form
• any applicable worksheets

Grab all five journalistic detail webinars today for just $25.

One of the things that makes these webinars so different not only from our usual content but also what you’ll see in any other webinar or online course is that they are based entirely on primary source material.

Rather than learn from me or abstract lessons, these webinars focus on close readings of travel articles and essays, particularly award-winning ones.

They cover:

• Part #1: Journalistic Detail and Why You Need It – Editors often say they want “researched” and “tight” “copy”, but what does that mean and how do you do it? In this webinar, the beginning of a new craft-oriented series on uncovering journalistic detail in your field research and incorporating it into different types of pieces, we explore what journalistic detail is, why you need it, and how to know it when you see it.
• Part #2: Weaving Journalistic Detail into Short Articles – In short, front-of-book pieces and in subsections of round-up features, the devil in the detail is choosing what to include from all of your research. In this webinar, we explore how to use your magazine’s audience and the type of magazine section you’re writing as a lens to drastically simplify the agonizing decisions of what details to include, how much time to devote to them, and how to execute them from a writing perspective.
• Part #3: Weaving Journalistic Detail into Descriptions of People – Fiction writers are known for their descriptions of characters, but so many writers skip these details in their travel pieces—to their detriment. Characters are one of the main things editors regularly lament that writers don’t include in their pitches or final pieces. In this webinar, we explore how to get the details you need on the ground as well as how to incorporate them into your pieces.
• Part #4: Weaving Journalistic Detail into Descriptions of Places – Setting the scene in your pieces can be the single hardest block of text for so many of us to write! How do we be “creative” or write that “flowery” stuff? The key to writing a description of a place that (1) doesn’t take you forever and push you into a type of writing you may not be so comfortable with, and (2) actually belongs in the piece your writing and shows your writing chops off to your editor (especially in a pitch) is a strong foundation in journalistic detail. We explore how it works with evocative verbal depictions of places in this webinar.
• Part #5: Creating Ambiance with Journalistic Detail – In this series on journalistic detail, we looked at many specific situations in which you should be thoughtful about how and why you’re introducing detail, from short articles to descriptions of people and places. In the last webinar in this series, we take it higher level—how do the details that you choose create a larger takeaway for the reader without you coming out and explicitly telling them what you want them to feel?

Grab your five journalistic detail webinars for just $25 now with the discount code detail5.

Delivery details:

• In the webinar library, add all of the webinars listed above to your cart and enter the code detail5.
• You need to have all six webinars in your cart for the coupon code to take effect.
• The webinars will be available immediately in your user profile on webinars.dreamoftravelwriting.com, and you will also receive an email for each webinar with the links to the downloadable audio, video, and transcript files.
• The shopping cart will automatically alert you if it cannot apply the coupon, because the wrong webinars are in the cart.

This offer has now ended. Thank you!

Today’s holiday trivia: Traditionally, the Japanese celebration of Ōmisoka had participants ensuring the completion of important activities before the end of the year in order to start the new year afresh. Activities ranged from house cleaning and repaying debts to purification rituals such as driving out evil spirits and bad luck, and bathing so the final hours of the year could be spent relaxing. More recently, families and friends gather together for one last time on December 31 to have a bowl of toshikoshi noodles—a tradition based on people’s association of eating the long noodles with “crossing over from one year to the next,” the meaning of toshi-koshi.

When we asked what people wanted to see in this year’s holiday specials, there was one thing people universally agreed on: they wanted to know how to land a spot on a press trip!

If you are new to travel writing, there is no doubt one thing that seems the golden goal for marking your successful entry into this work: scoring a spot on a free trip for travel writers.

I’ve seen this as a goal for many folks who joined us for our 5-week annual review and 2018 planning process last winter and with our Dream Buffet and coaching program members in calls this year.

And if this is one of your goals this year, I’ve got great news for you:

Setting up free trips as a travel writer is dead simple.

That’s actually why we don’t write about it so much on our blog! Earning money from these trips is much harder–but don’t worry, we discuss that in-depth too throughout these webinars.

The fact of the matter is that most experienced travel writers either:

• don’t take a lot of press trips or accept sponsored travel for ethical, legal (for certain publications its a contract violation), or simple logistical reasons (many just don’t have the time to devote that the organized press trips require because they’re too busy writing!)
• prefer to work directly with tourism boards and venues to engage only in highly-individualized itineraries to ensure their travel time is used to the most advantage . . . leaving spots in regular, organized trips for you

Though the winter and early spring months don’t seem like the best time to travel, this is actually when you’ll find yourself with the most opportunities to snag and attend trips because:

• destinations don’t have tons of visitors at this time, so it’s easier for venues to host you, because they aren’t taking away from paid bookings
• in order for stories to hit in time for paying leisure travelers to plan their trips, you need to visit, write up, and publish your stories four to six months in advance of the main vacation season
• the early months of the year are prime time for expos–from regional events like The New York Times Travel Show and the Seattle Golf and Travel Show to major international events like ITB Berlin–which are some of the easiest and best places to set up free trips for yourself (I’ve long planned my entire year just from the connections at ITB each spring)
• press trips are readily available for all attendees (or, if not all, then those who ace an easy application process) through the many travel writing conferences that take place in the spring

That’s why, for today’s holiday special offer, we’re giving you a chance to grab all of our six of the webinars from our two series on how to get on press trips and make the most of them for a special price–$36.

You’ll save more than 70 percent on these full webinar packages, which include:

• streamable high-def video
• smaller downloadable video
• streamable and downloadable audio file
• full transcript available to read on screen or as a PDF download
• all webinar slides in PDF form
• any applicable worksheets

For just $36, grab the full webinar packages of:

1. Setting Up Sponsored Trips 101: Getting on a sponsored trip is the holy grail of travel writing, right? Living a life in which you effortlessly hop from one free trip to another, spending your days enjoying haute cuisine and your nights in the fluffy king bed of your complimentary suite? Here we discuss the basic tenets of free travel as a travel writer, from ethics to minimum barrier of entry to the different types of trips, and their various pros and cons.
2. What to Expect on Press Trips: The first in our new series of webinars looking at the pre-, during, and post- aspects of press trips so you can get the most of any sponsored travel you have coming up this summer or are planning down the line, this webinar begins with the full gamut of with what you can realistically expect from your press trips–the good and the bad.
3. How to Prepare for Your Press Trips: In this webinar, we look more about the story side of pre-trip preparation, including how to break your trip into stories, what is safe to pitch based on a limited itinerary or destination you’re not familiar with, and how to handle the catch-22 of pitching when you haven’t yet been accepted on a trip.
   
4. How to Get the Most (On the Ground) Out of Your Press Trips: In the previous webinar in this series, we looked at the planning aspect of this process–figuring out what stories you can possibly get from the destination and itinerary site unseen–but this time we focus on how to do it in the ground, where the best, most specific story ideas are found.
5. How To Set Up An Individual Trip From Scratch: In this section we’re going to dive head first into how exactly to plan your own individual sponsored trips that fits your interests, travel preferences, and schedule. Here we look at where to find these trips and best practices for applying. I pull real press trips, read between the lines, and break down exactly what you would do in each situation of your application.
6. Getting A Spot On A Group Fam Or Press Trip: In this webinar on Getting a Spot on a Group Fam of Press Trip, in our series on getting free travel as a travel writer, we’ll look at where to find these trips and best practices for applying, and then I’ll pull real press trips, read between the lines, and break down exactly what you would do in each situation in your application.

To take advantage of this offer and grab these six webinars just $36–nearly 70 percent off the normal pricing–head to the webinar library, and load up your cart with the webinars listed above and enter the code freetravel6.

Delivery details:

• In the webinar library, add all of the webinars listed above to your cart and enter the code freetravel6.
• You need to have all six webinars in your cart for the coupon code to take effect.
• If you have previously purchased one of the webinars in the set, that will preclude you from adding that specific webinar to your cart. We set up new test accounts attached to different email addresses to get around this issue, and recommend you do the same if you are running into this issue as it is the only work around.
• The webinars will be available immediately in your user profile on webinars.dreamoftravelwriting.com, and you will also receive an email for each webinar with the links to the downloadable audio, video, and transcript files.
• The shopping cart will automatically alert you if it cannot apply the coupon, because the wrong webinars are in the cart.

This offer has now ended. Thank you!

Today’s holiday trivia: While countries across the globe celebrate New Year’s Day on January 1, Montserrat celebrates Jump-up Day. Commemorating the emancipation of the slaves of Montserrat, Jump-up Day is the last day of Carnival on the island with steel bands and masquerades, as well as male dancers chosen for their large size, who dance encumbered by chains to represent slavery.

If you woke up today, the first day of the new year, and thought to yourself or made yourself a promise somewhere along the lines of, “This year is going to be different. I am going to make sure that my travel writing takes off,” then this one is for you.

People often ask me which of our retreats is my favorite.

They’re all so different–from the people to the programs–that I say it’s like the favorite child dilemma.

But since our first week-long Freelance Travel Writing Bootcamp, I have to say, there is a certain child that I favor. Having the opportunity to spend a week together digging in and making deep progress throughout the week felt special on its own, but the last 24 hours of the retreat were what sealed it for me.

For our final outing, we had a private tour of a landmark modern art institution. Little did I know, heading into the outing, the attendees were actually dreading it, because most had had decidedly uninspiring experiences with contemporary art in the past.

However, we had worked throughout the week, in all sorts of settings, on honing our ability to find stories from any experience, no matter what.

And within less than an hour of begin at the museum, the attendee who was most unenthused about the very concept of modern art had whipped out her phone and scribbled down an entire, stunning, thought-provoking essay based on her experience.

When we returned to the retreat house that evening, the attendees busied themselves working on their final assignment while I set up a bonfire for our final evening’s celebration.

One attendee had worked on writing a story in the style of a section in Lonely Planet Magazine for this assignment, but during our last one-on-one, I had requested a number of revisions and that she dig in and put herself and her feelings deeper into the backbone of the story.

When she read the piece in our final session–designed for all participants to share how far they had come and us to celebrate that progress together–the final version was so perfect, so poignant, that it was met with a round of applause and tears from many.

I have been completely blown away by this experience purely because of the incredible changes it creates in such a short time.

The bootcamp is not designed as a beginner / introduction-style event providing just a basis in the opportunities in travel writing today, where you’re expected to go home and then do the work. It’s all about action, specifically, leaving as a finely tuned travel writing machine.

The bootcamp encompasses the IdeaFest curriculum and much more, moving into pitching and writing a workshopped story, and in particular is able to really focus on the process of transferring what you see in “the wild” (out touring and doing research while traveling) into article ideas and then quickly formulating the associated pitches with little time and fuss.

Everything from the approach to interviewing, what details to take in with the senses, and the note-taking process we’ll discuss all center around getting more and more usable ideas.

That’s why, for today’s special, we are offering a very special chance to grab a spot in the Freelance Travel Writing Bootcamp–with your (domestic) flight included.

What’s Already Included with Bootcamp

The Freelance Travel Writing Bootcamp already comes with:

• 12 modules (you can read the full schedule here)  with special sessions to dovetail our afternoon tours and 4 post-tour debriefs.
• Four afternoon multi-stop tours to historic, natural, and artistic sites in the Catskills and Hudson Valley ($450 value).
• Two private coaching sessions with Gabi during the weekend to polish your portfolio, pitches, and proposals and plan for your travel writing success after the retreat ($250 value).
• A shared room with writing desk and the opportunity to stay on at the retreat center the following week as many days as you’d like to continue working on your pitches in a focused writing space ($150 value).
• The opportunity to stay at the retreat house for an as many days the week before or after the retreat as you’d like ($300 value).
• Wholesome, organic meals, beverages and snacks throughout the retreat ($250 value).
• A print copy of The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map…plus you’ll skip the shipping. We’ve already paid that for you ($25 value).

You can get all of this (a more than $1,500 value!) PLUS your domestic flight for $649 today until midnight EST only for our February 3-9, 2019 Freelance Travel Writing Bootcamp.

How Are We Making That Work?
As we were digging through the responses on our Thanksgiving survey, we noticed both price and distance are a big issue for many of you in terms of attending our live events.

First, and foremost, this offer is available in a very limited quantity, but the gist is that, we’ve got some extra miles / credit card points that we can put toward making this happen for those of you who wouldn’t be able to afford it otherwise.

If you’re traveling coast-to-coast there will likely be a red-eye on the west-to-east direction, but we’ll do our best to avoid it if we can.

We cannot extend this offer to anyone with strict needs in terms of flight arrival and departure windows. You need to have some flexibility on both days and times for this to work, particularly as there is no way for you to fly out the same evening the event ends due to driving time to the New York airports from the retreat location.

In general, we will also avoid heinous flight times and connection as much as absolutely necessary and check with you if we’ve got something like that that looks unavoidable.

This flight offer is only available for airports within the continental U.S. (so no Hawaii or Alaska; or short Canadian flights unfortunately, but if you are somewhere that can reach New York by train, such as Toronto or Montreal and don’t mind coming that way, then we can do that). If you are coming from abroad and want to fly in somewhere else, we can fly you to New York from there.

There is no additional follow-up coaching or Dream Buffet access included with this offer.

Who Can Make the Most of This Offer?
Today’s special is especially for all of you who are just starting out, for if you don’t have clips (or not any that you’re proud of), you don’t have a blog you’ve worked on for some time, and you haven’t changed your LinkedIn profile to proudly proclaim yourself a travel writer.

In particular, we hope this offer can make it possible for some of those of you who couldn’t make a retreat happen otherwise.

The commitment from you:

• a promise both to yourself and to me that you will remain resilient and flexible throughout this process as we reshape your preconceptions about what is and isn’t needed in this career
• determination to give 100% to the work you’ll do during our time together
• resolution to do the soul-searching to dig up what’s really holding you back and who you really want to be in this new career so we can create a sustainable foundation in our time together

This offer is extremely limited–both because of spots in the bootcamp and also the fact that we can only have enough points to do a small number of these flight offers–so if you’re interested, check your schedule and reserve now.

Reserve your spot in our bootcamp–flight included–for $649 now.

Delivery: Please reply to your order receipt and let us know:

• your departure airport(s–if you live in a place with several options like NYC or the SF Bay Area)
• your full legal name and birth date as required for the flight booking (any changes to these due to incorrectly supplied information will incur a fee payable by the attendee)
• how many days before or after the event if is possible for you to arrive so we have options for your flights

We will confirm your flights this week.

You can arrive early the week before and leave late the week following the retreat at your leisure up to one week on either end.

We’ll send a questionnaire to collect more information about your dietary needs and excursion preferences closer to the event.

One important note: Outside of our coaching program summer camp, this is the last week-long event we’re planning to schedule for a while, so if this dedicated time to skill up and create a new sense of confidence in your travel writing is something you need this year, this is the time.

This offer has now ended. Thank you!

Today’s holiday trivia: Celebrated from January 2 to 7, the Blacks and Whites’ Carnival is the largest carnival celebration in South Colombia, attracting a considerable number of Colombian and foreign tourists. The modern carnival is based on the need to express imagination, play, friendship and sharing the joy that surrounds the Epiphany. January 2’s celebration includes Tribute to the Virgin of Mercy, the Colonies Parade, and Pastorock, an event for the development of alternative music.

I don’t talk so much about this side of my writing, but in the summer of 2015, I took some time off from my freelance writing work to give myself a DIY MFA in narrative non-fiction writing, from the craft side to the ins and outs of working with a traditional publishing house.

Over the last couple years, while I’ve been working with all of you on Dream of Travel Writing, I’ve kept my ear to the ground in those circles and continued that education, but something else very interesting has happened in the intervening years.

I’ve seen many folks I know go from book proposal to published book (and often follow-up books!).

It’s simply amazing how fast and easy it is to become a traditionally published author today. That is, if you go about it the right way.

As I’ve been working with all of you in the last few years, I’ve also seen what it is really like–today–to be a guidebook writer by profession. You may have heard shock-and-awe stories in the past about the life of a guidebook writer, but today, many writers focus on guidebooks as their main job, working on several books per year, sometimes for multiple guidebook companies at the same time.

Both of these bright spots in the publishing landscape mean that if five-figure paychecks are something you’d like to see, books are the way to go.

That’s why I’m so pumped to publicly offer two of our recent webinars series for today’s holiday special for the first time outside of our Dream Buffet and coaching programs!

For today’s offer, we’ve paired up our series on what it is really like to be a guidebook writer and our webinar series on how you too can become a non-fiction author with your book out from a storied publisher like Harper Collins or Penguin or the academic press of your choice for the first time as part of today’s holiday special, including:

1. What Is and What is Not a Saleable Non-Fiction Book Today: Finding Your Place in the Marketplace – You shouldn’t take one step down the research rabbit hole with a book project until you understand how it fits into the marketplace. Editors and agents love to ask “where would this go in Barnes and Noble,” and their favorite authors are the ones that understand the book industry. In this webinar, we’ll not only explore what is selling today (along with some peeks at what is not and why) and explore the age-old question of to self-publish or not to self-publish, but I’ll introduce you to a powerful tool that can help you quickly and easily find both what your book should focus on (because the decision really isn’t up to you) and how to get an agent!
2. Know Your Non-Fiction Book’s Market to Make Its Business Case – In this webinar, I’ll introduce the non-fiction book proposal and its main sections and then zero in on one of the two you need to spend your most time and research prowess on: the target market. This is where your book will literally live and die. It doesn’t matter to an agent how interesting they think your topic is if he doesn’t think they can sell it to an editor, and it doesn’t matter to an editor how much she loves your writing if her publisher doesn’t think he can make his money back and more on the book.
3. You Are Your Non-Fiction Book’s Best Marketer: How to Make it Work – In last week’s webinar, we looked at one of the two most important sections of your non-fiction book proposal, and this week we dive into the second: the marketing plan. No matter what connections you do or don’t have now, you can still make a killer marketing plan that is believable to a publisher and perfectly positions your book in the market. It all comes down to the triad of research, creativity, and a willingness to put yourself out there for your book.
4. The Parts of Your Book Proposal About You and Your Book (And Why They’re Actually Much Less Important!) – There are several parts of the non-fiction book proposal—the author bio, overview, chapter summary, and sample chapters—that can easily feel like the parts you should spend the majority of your time on, but they can easily become enormous time sucks! We’ll look at how to efficiently power through the rest of your book proposal to get it polished and down without drowning in decision paralysis so your proposal can leave your laptop and do what it’s supposed to do: get agents interested in your project so you can get the feedback you need to make changes based on the knowledge of people who live and breathe books (a.k.a. book professionals and not you!).
5. The Guidebook Guide Series: The Players and the Game – Not all guidebook companies are equal–for the writer, which is very different than in the public perception of the brand–when it comes to pay, treatment, and the writing process. Join us for the first webinar in a new series on how to break into the publishing world through guidebook writing.
   
6. The Guidebook Guide Series: The Life of a Guidebook Writer – For the second webinar in our series on how to break into guidebook writing, we continue learning about the guidebook landscape for professional travel writers. While you may have heard the bad and the ugly about life as a guidebook writer, we dig into the reality of those who have made it their full-time gig.
7. The Guidebook Guide Series: The Writing Side of Guidebook Work – For this live webinar, the third part of our new series, we explore what it is like to work as a guidebook writer today, from the money to the travel to the actual writing. We also answer the question of what is it actually like to write a book-length work in a month or two–particularly working in a tried and true formula you have little control over.
   

But that’s only seven webinars!

For the last webinar in this series, we’ve got something special. It comes from a partner of ours that focuses on the book writing space, and this webinar features an interview between the editor of the Writer’s Digest Guide to Literary Agents and a noted literary agent on what agents look for when choosing offers to represent.

At the regular price ($19 each), this much content would typically set you back more than $130, because all of the webinars from our library come with:

• streamable high-def video
• smaller downloadable video
• streamable and downloadable audio file
• full transcript available to read on screen or as a PDF download
• all webinar slides in PDF form
• any applicable worksheets

But you can save $100 and grab both series and the bonus agent interview today for $38 with our holiday special with the discount code writebooks8.

Delivery details:

• In the webinar library, add all of the webinars listed above to your cart and enter the code writebooks8.
• You need to have all seven webinars listed above in your cart for the coupon code to take effect. The agent interview webinar will be included in the email with your download information for the first webinar in the series “What Is and What is Not a Saleable Non-Fiction Book Today: Finding Your Place in the Marketplace.”
• The webinars will be available immediately in your user profile on webinars.dreamoftravelwriting.com, and you will also receive an email for each webinar with the links to the downloadable audio, video, and transcript files.
• The shopping cart will automatically alert you if it cannot apply the coupon, because the wrong webinars are in the cart.

This offer has now ended. Thank you!

Today’s holiday trivia: In Greece, name days are a much-anticipated event each year, greatly overshadowing birthdays. Each person’s name day is celebrated on the day of the saint with the same name and is a cause for birthday-like celebrations including sweets, gifts, and parties, hosted by the person with the name of the day and often featuring live music. On January 3, it is the saint day of Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, who is said was said to have saved Paris by diverting Attila’s Huns away from the city.

For today’s 12 Days of Holiday Specials offer, we’re giving you the first shot at accessing our newest opportunity to seriously up your magazine assignment game–the At-Home Ideafest and Pitchapalooza Programs with teaching assistant support to make sure you are on-track each step of the journey.

The responses past attendees have received from editors are incredible. Here’s one of my favorites:

“Thank you for sending in this pitch – I would like to take you up on it! Sounds like you have everything fairly dialed in and know the department well (thank you for that!)”

And it was a very quick acceptance, too!

Based on our live IdeaFest retreat, our new four-week program IdeaFest is designed to provide a serious and lasting foundation to turn you into an idea machine, turning up dozens of article ideas every day.

For the home program, we’ve spread the same material we cover in our live event out over four weeks with one email lesson each day (rather than me talking for an hour and a half for each!):

• January 28 – February 1: Getting crystal clear on the three sides of the idea triangle–the conceptualizing approach that will ensure you never have an idea that an editor doesn’t think fits her magazine again.
• February 4 – 8: The magazine-first approach to pitching in practice–learning how to let magazines give you dozens of ideas of what to pitch them, and getting comfortable enough with the magazine landscape that you never have to wonder what kind of magazine would be interested in a certain story again.
• February 11 – 15: Final checks and the spin cycle–the methods to not only ensure your ideas don’t bong with the magazines your pitching, but the see how those “outside the scope” concepts actually become dozens of new pitch ideas for other magazines.
• February 18 – 22: Pitching specialized articles–digging into the dreaded (or highly anticipated!) feature, essay, and long-form markets and learning to formulate ideas that cover thousands of words as well as thousands of miles or years while expressing everything in the succinct format of an idea that can be proven to sell.

You can read more specifically about the new IdeaFest program here, including why this program is the foundation you’ve been missing, how the program progresses, and how the program works if you aren’t able to attend to the lessons right away as they’re assigned.

The crazy thing about today’s special offer, however, is that we are not only giving you first crack at the revamped program and a deep discount–we’re also throwing in the At-Home Pitchapalooza Program to give you two programs for the price of one, giving you everything you need to make sure that 2019 is the year you hit your magazine-writing goals.

In its five weeks, from February 25 through March 28, the At-Home Pitchapalooza Program will walk you through:

• breaking down your past trips and future trips into pitches tailored for specific publications
• learning how specifically to pitch short magazine sections (100-300 words), recurring columns, and features
• troubleshooting all the common pitch issues and work through all the snags you are each hitting individually
• spending time not only writing pitches, but reworking them to make sure they hit the mark
• breaking down common editor responses, how to handle them, and how to negotiate for higher rates when you do get the assignment

As part of this special, nine-week offer, you’ll receive:

• 45 lessons (daily on weekdays for the 9 weeks of the two back-to-back programs)
• access to the Travel Magazine Database for the duration of the program
• private forum to discuss and critique assignments, article ideas, and pitches–available not just during the course, but going forward for you to use again and again, even to redo the program material during future rounds of the At-Home IdeaFest and Pitchapalooza Programs
• support from our customer service manager and teaching assistant on each of your homework assignments

Today, you can grab a spot in both programs for just $279–more than 45% off the regular price of purchasing both programs separately (you’ll receive the IdeaFest program entirely for free).

Besides this serious discount, this is also one of the only ways into the At-Home IdeaFest Program running January 28 through February 22, or the continuation, the At-Home Pitchapalooza program running February 25 through March 29, this winter with teaching assistant support.

We are delighted to offer this new option with an amazing teaching assistant that I am honored will be joining us for the program. She holds an MFA in creative non-fiction, so she is well-versed in the process of workshopping writing submissions, and her work has appeared in BBC Travel, N by Norwegian, Hakai Magazine, Singapore Airlines’ SilverKris, Verge Magazine, and many other publications. In her capacity as senior editor for Almost Fearless magazine and managing editor for Everywhere Magazine , she has also sat on the other side of the desk, fielding pitches as an editor.

To make sure that our team can give their attention to everyone’s assignments, this iteration of IdeaFest will only be open to:

• past participants in the At-Home Pitchapalooza Program or live Pitchapalooza retreat who opt in to participate in IdeaFest at this time
• people who grab the special $279 offer for both the At-Home IdeaFest Program and At-Home Pitchapalooza Program (more than 45% off the regular price of purchasing both programs separately) during our 12 Days of Christmas deal on Thursday, January 3.

Grab your spot in both programs for just $279 now.

Delivery details :

• During the duration of the program, from January 28 to March 29, you will receive a lesson each weekday via email.
• All lessons will also be available in the program website, with a new lesson appearing each weekday, during the program.
• Our customer service manager and teaching assistant will check into the site once each weekday to review your homework assignments submitted through the program forum and provide feedback to improve your idea generation and pitches.
• You will receive access to the Travel Magazine Database for the duration of the program and will begin when the program commences.

Today’s holiday trivia: January 4 marks a major festival in the Ryukyuan religion, a formal of Shintoism practiced in the islands between Japan and Taiwan, particularly Okinawa. The hinukan, a hearth god that guards the sacred family fire, returns to the family after returning to its own home for several weeks and is welcomed with offerings of rice and local alcohol.

For today’s offer, we’re combining two holiday offers we’ve extended for Thanksgiving and the holiday season in the past with more goodies, including some brand new bonus digital content.

All told, we’ve got ten things for you (well, some have multiple parts, so it’s actually even more :)) today, including some that you’ll receive right away digitally, and some we will ship to you–including something special that we will hand-pick based on your writing interests.

Our bonuses center around The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map, which is literally a step-by-step road map, complete with 15 hands-on exercises along the way, for how to boost your travel writing income.

Exercises include:

• how to set up your travel writing website and online presence in one hour
• how to break your trips into travel article pitches
• how to analyze a travel magazine to find what the editor is looking for
• how to write travel article pitches in just 15-minutes
• how to find and reach out to your own on-going travel writing clients

The last fifty pages of The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map also include ten appendices detailing more than 1,500 magazines that need travel articles, real press trip itineraries, sample travel content proposals you can send to companies, and lists of the top travel conferences, writing resources, and twitter chats.

We also offer plans for how to work through the book based on where you are in your travel writing journey, whether you:

• are thinking about going into travel writing part- or full-time
• have some travel writing clips that you’ve done for your own blog, for free, or at low rates, and want to figure out how to make this a career
• have been travel writing part- or full-time for a year or more but haven’t been able to get your income where you’d like it to be
• have dozens or hundreds of clips already and just want to take your game to the next level–especially if you’re looking to break into the regular, recurring-income-oriented world of content marketing

Want to know more? Read a chapter-by-chapter breakdown here.

But for today’s offer, we are packing on the bonuses, so you new-year physical and digital jump-start package will include:

1. A print copy of The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map (and a digital copy for reference when you’re on the road )
2. A new hard-to-find, independent travel magazine in line with your travel writing interests that we’ll pick up just for you at a specialty shop next week (these are a great place to publish long-form stories–even if you’re just starting out!)
   
3. Our proprietary pitching workbook for brainstorming, organizing, repurposing, and refining ideas (also in print form for easy fill-in plus digital copies so you have them whenever you need them)
4. Our signature “Your dreams don’t make themselves” tote bag to carry all your gear when you’re on the road–it’s the perfect size for a laptop, notebook, water bottle, wallet, and your photography gear
   
5. A digital copy of our 180-page Ultimate Guide to Pitching (and Landing) Travel Magazine Articles
6. A digital copy of 47 Quick Ways to Jumpstart Your Travel Writing Business, Get More Clients, and Soar Ahead of the Competition in Seven Minutes a Day
7. A digital copy of Everything You Need to Know to Start Traveling for Free (With Points and Miles)
   
8. Our five-part annual review video series for doing a deep-dive on exactly what matters to you and how to achieve it in the year ahead
9. Our video course on “How to Become Part of an Editor’s Stable”
10. The replay of our three-and-a-half-hour live masterclass Master Magazine Pitching Workshop

Grab all of this today by midnight EST for just $79, so you can hit the ground running in the new year.

All told, you’ll receive your goodies in two packages, one by email and one by snail mail. After your purchase, you’ll receive an email with:

• 5 PDFs:
  • The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map
  • Our proprietary pitching workbook
  • Our 180-page Ultimate Guide to Pitching (and Landing) Travel Magazine Articles
  • 47 Quick Ways to Jumpstart Your Travel Writing Business, Get More Clients, and Soar Ahead of the Competition in Seven Minutes a Day
  • Everything You Need to Know to Start Traveling for Free (With Points and Miles)
    
• 7 videos:
  • Our three-and-a-half-hour live Master Magazine Pitching Workshop
  • Our webinar on “How to Become Part of an Editor’s Stable”
  • Our five-part annual review video series, including:
    
    1. What is Standing Between You and Your Travel Writing Goals
    2. How to Clearly Catalog the Work and Opportunities You Have Now to See Where You Need to Go
    3. Taking Stock of the Past Year and SWOTing Yourself Into Shape
    4. Getting Crystal Clear on What You’ll Accomplish in the Next Year
    5. Mapping Out Your Step-by-Step Plan for Success

Then, you’ll receive a package to your preferred mailing address with:

• A print copy of The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map
• The independent travel magazine we’ve selected for you personally
  

  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  

  
  
• Our proprietary pitching workbook for brainstorming, organizing, repurposing, and refining ideas
• Our signature “Your dreams don’t make themselves” tote bag
  

It’s a lot! We know 🙂

We want to make sure you have everything you need to start the year on your best foot. That’s why we’re giving you more than 75% off what it would cost to pick up all of these resources separately.

Grab your new year jump-start package for just $79 now!

Delivery: As soon as your order goes through, you’ll automatically receive all of your digital resources by email.

Please respond to that email with:

• confirmation of your preferred shipping address for your package
• some brief information about your travel and writing interests so that we can pick out the best independent travel magazine for you; I’ll be in London with some of the best magazine shops on January 13th, so please make sure to get us this information by then

Since we’re out of the country right now, we’ll begin putting your package together when we’re back the week of January 14, and will send you the tracking number when your goodies are in the mail.

Please note: This offer is only available for U.S. addresses. There is an option to an additional fee for international shipping on the purchase page.

This offer has now ended. Thank you!

Today’s holiday trivia: In many European countries, the celebration of Christmas on December 25 pales in comparison with January 6’s Feast of the Epiphany–also know as the visit of the three wise men or magi. Presents for children arrive on the eve of the Epiphany rather than Christmas Eve, though they are not delivered by a jolly man. In Italy, gifts are ferried about by La Befana, a witch with a long nose and speedy broomstick who leaves garlic and onions, in addition to the usual coal, for bad children or parents who haven’t left her a glass of wine.

When we asked what you wanted in this year’s holiday specials, there was a ton of interest in our webinars, particularly around:

• journalistic detail
• setting up sponsored trips
• getting a book published

So, we’ve run discounts exclusive to our 12 days of holiday specials on all three. But…

Since all of you are in a different places with your travel writing, we know there are things that you might need that another might be past or not be ready for yet, so we didn’t want to make our specials entirely a popularity contest, and came up with a way for you to put together your own, person, customized webinar discount set.

We’ve also slashed 75% off the price you would normally pay to get all of these webinars in our library, where each comes in a set with:

• streamable high-def video
• smaller downloadable video
• streamable and downloadable audio file
• full transcript available to read on screen or as PDF download
• all webinar slides in PDF form
• any applicable worksheets

To take advantage of this offer and grab any 11 of your choosing webinars just $56–nearly 75 percent off the normal pricing–head to the webinar library, and load up your cart with the webinars listed above and enter the code chooseyourown.

Not sure what is right for you? Here are some suggestions based on what you want to focus on this year.

Need Recurring Income?

In our workshops on creating a six-figure income with your travel writing, I dedicate a significant chunk of time to recurring income, because it lies at the heart of so many crucial things for your freelance business:

• the ability to plan ahead (for both life and business)
• optimizing your client delivery time and work flows
• regular boosts of self-confidence that people want to work with you and that your work is worth paying for
• mental freedom from anxiety about where exactly money will be coming from this month

Last year, we offered a webinar set dedicated to covering the fundamentals of travel content marketing, from what the best opportunities are to how to identify the companies most likely to respond to a cold pitch to what exactly to say (or not say!) on that first phone call to close the deal. And that is a very common source of recurring income. But there are other ways to go about it as well. Learn about them all with this combination of 11 webinars and today’s 75% off special code chooseyourown:

• Writing for Travel Trade Magazines 101: These magazines work quite different than custom and consumer titles in many ways, notably editors pitch you ideas rather than the other way around, making your hourly rate go way up. Some trade editors will even provide you with interview sources! Trade magazines are the single best way to establish a clear pipeline of assignments and also maximize your hourly rate when writing for magazines, and we look at how, why, and how to get started writing for them in this week’s webinar.
• How to Write a Letter of Introduction—The Pitch Equivalent for Trade Magazines: Unlike consumer and custom magazines, trade magazine editors are approached by something called an LOI or letter or introduction, which has more in common with a cover letter on a job application than a magazine pitch. We look at when to use a letter of introduction, how to craft your own boilerplate one for each vertical within the travel trade world that you’re looking to pitch, and how to avoid information overload.
• How to Become Part of an Editor’s Stable: In this webinar on How to Become Part of an Editor’s Stable, we’ll look at how to build those relationships with editors with copious quotes right from the sources that I’ve drawn from editor panels at recent events with major newsstand titles represented.
  
• How To Earn Big With Travel Content Marketing: Here we talk about the different opportunities for travel content marketing writing–from blog posts to content strategy to choosing and editing photos for Instagram–what kind of pay you can expect, and where to start looking for these opportunities.
• How To Locate The People Who Need Your Travel Content Marketing: We continue looking at where the big money in travel writing is hiding this week in part two of our series on travel content marketing writing: how to identify the people you can approach for this type of work, whether companies or tourism boards.
• How To Craft A Travel Content Marketing Pitch That Gets Attention: In the third portion of our coverage on travel content marketing writing, I break down the steps of putting together your own pitch to send cold to companies and tourism boards you think would benefit from your services, including powerful statistics on content marketing ROI to include and just how much information to give away to keep your prospect interested without setting them up to go execute your plan without you.
• How To Close The Deal: Proposals And Phone Calls That Get ResultsHow To Close The Deal: Proposals And Phone Calls That Get Results: In this webinar, we’ll cover, in detail: the exact questions to ask and path to follow in your call to ensure the best results for you and your prospect (it has to be a win-win to close a good deal!), what to listen for in your prospect’s responses to make sure your proposal speaks his or her language, the formula I use to put together proposals that wow prospects and close deals.
• Pricing, Negotiating, And Contracts (For Travel Content Marketing and Magazine Writing): In this webinar, in addition to covering the sections to make sure you include in your travel writing contracts, I cover general pricing and negotiation. Here you can find out what you “should” be charging in different situations…along with what you could be asking for when an editor names a price to you.
• How to Sell Blogging to Travel Companies and Tourism Boards: In this webinar, we discuss exactly what statistics, industry terms, and buttons to push you need to know to get yourself in the door with, fielding assignments from, and signing recurring contracts with tourism boards and travel companies.
• Best Practices When Writing on the Web for Travel Companies: Even if you’re had your own blog for years, tune in to learn the best practices in blogging technique and style when writing for companies and tourism boards, which are trying to provide information quick to readers who may have never visited their site before and may never come back again once they’ve gotten what they needed.
  
• Ghost(writ)ing on the Web as a Travel Writer: So many small travel businesses, whether tour companies or concierge travel bookers, are built around the judgment and expertise of the owner. A blog showcasing those unique advantages is a no-brainer for these companies to build trust with prospective customers, but the owner rarely has the time–or the writing chops. We unpack the process of creating ghostwritten content for your travel blogging clients.

Want to Perfect Your Pitches?

If finally breaking into the $1/word travel magazine markets is on your mind this year, you could put together a package of 11 webinars that covers everything you need to get pitches out to magazines now, from:

• why working with magazines is one of the best uses of your travel writing time in the first place
• exactly which magazines are right for you
• how to pull ideas from past trips and find them on upcoming trips
• sure-fire ways to know if your idea is on fire or a dud
• how to ensure the perfect match between idea and market

In that case, we suggest:

• How to Craft the Perfect Travel Article Pitch: You can take workshop after workshop on how to write the perfect travel article, but if your pitches aren’t landing assignments, it’s all for naught. In this webinar, we walk step-by-step through what you need to know to write the perfect pitch–and everything that you should leave out.
• The Magazine Landscape: Where All the Assignments Are Hiding: As we come up on a milestone of 300 magazines in the Travel Magazine Database, even I’m struck by how many fully-travel and travel adjacent magazines are out there looking for content. In this webinar, we look at five types of magazines looking for travel content that you may be missing out on, and three ways to find more magazines that you’ve never heard of to pitch.
• Don’t Create Ideas Out of Nowhere: How to Always Find Them When You Need Them: I’ve found the the process of coming up with the right ideas is much more of an issue than actually writing the pitch. Once you’ve got the idea right, the rest comes much more easily. In this webinar, we work in detail through three different ways to generate ideas from magazines and three ways to come up with ideas “from thin air”. Never be worried about *what* to pitch again.
• How to Hone Your Travel Article Ideas to Perfectly Fit Each Magazine: In this webinar we workshoped article concepts into ready-to-pitch, focused ideas with multiple angles matched to specific magazines. I pre-matched them with specific sections from multiple magazines and walked through the process of honing an article “idea” from your concept into something adapted to a magazine and ready to pitch.
• How to Generate Sure-Fire Saleable Ideas: Instead of generating article ideas and then trying to find a magazine that will take your idea, I find starting your brainstorming with the sections magazines include yields a much higher success rate. In this webinar, we cover techniques that you can also use with any magazine that you have a copy of and ensures that your pitches hit the mark and you get responses from editors.
• How to Break Your Trips into the Maximum Number of Article Ideas: Does one trip equate to just one story? Certainly not if you’re looking to make a living as a travel writer. In fact, it’s much more normal for full-time writers deriving their entire income from travel writing to place 10-12 articles from one trip–right when they first return. In this webinar, we discuss the basic tenets of free travel as a travel writer, from ethics to minimum barrier to entry to the different types of trips and their various pros and cons.
• How to Increase Your Success Rate By Analyzing Magazines: The process of pitching regularly will drastically improve your income and portfolio, and editors respond best to pitches that demonstrate a knowledge of their publication. The best way to demonstrate that knowledge is by only pitching specific sections of the magazine. In this webinar we show you exactly how to do just that.
• Mastering AP Style–The Grammar Style of Choice for Publications : Showing an editor (in both your pitch and your article submission) that you already understand what she’s looking for is one of the best ways to forge a long-term relationship with an editor. But that goes behind simply familiarizing yourself with the publication. Understanding and using AP style, the preferred grammar and style format for print and many online publications, can quickly broadcast to an editor that you have solid journalist experience (even if you actually don’t!).
• Mastering Style at a Sentence by Sentence Level : Continuing the groundwork we laid in the previous webinar on AP style, we move into writing essentials on a structural level, beginning with sentence structure. I unpack common issues I (and other editors) are increasingly seeing today and how to avoid them in your writing. If you’ve been primarily writing on your own blog or for clients that don’t have in-house editors, this will bring your writing to the next level so that when you pitch editors, rather than an eyebrow raise and delete, your pitches elicit a sense of professional camaraderie due to your polished prose.
  
• Answers to Your Most Common Pitching Questions: While there are some basic questions that come up again and again, there are also deeper, more “circumstance”-based questions that many are afraid to ask in a group setting because they think they’ve done something wrong in their pitch or editor-writer etiquette to get into the situation in the first place. In this webinar, I share from my huge store of these pitching questions for both the newer writers and people who have been doing this for a while.
• The Art of the Follow-up–The Simple Key to Dramatically More Assignments: In this webinar, we talk about timing, scripts, and mechanics of following up with editors on your pitches. I also share some more unusual or downright awkward editor responses from members of our community and discuss how to handle them.

Planning to Get Serious About Your Business This Year?

When I first started freelance travel writing, there were no websites dedicated to the business side of the travel writer’s life, and only a handful of solid sources on creating a stable income as a freelance writer. Most people simply thought it couldn’t be done, and the ones out there doing it were to busy working for their clients and living awesome freelance lives to tell the rest of us how to do it!

This dearth of actionable advice on business catered to the special circumstances of being a travel writer was a driving factor in creating Dream of Travel Writing, so one of our largest categories of webinars revolves around running the business (read: cha ching) side of travel writing so that you are maximizing your hours to make sure you get the most pay while also still having the most time for your travels, family, and friends.

• The Secrets of Six-Figure Travel Writers: As a travel writer earning six figures for several years, I used to get a lot of questions at industry conferences about just how exactly I did it, so I started coaching new, struggling and transitioning travel writers along the journey. Here we explore the misconceptions that keep people from achieving their income goals as a travel writer and you’ll leave with tools to increase your income right away.
• What Type of Articles Should You Be Writing?: In this webinar, we cover the the different major types of articles that you should be looking out for when you’re on the road: examples of these types of articles, how to pitch them, and how to write them.
  
• Triple Your Income Writing for Magazines: For years naysayers have claimed that there is no money to be made in the magazine industry, the fact is that magazines still pay significantly better than websites–and there’s many more opportunities to write about travel for print magazines than you realize. Sleek, well-paying, new travel magazines are actually popping up every week. You just need to know where to find them.
• Taking Control of Your Freelance Travel Writing Finances: Join us for a new series on getting the business side of your freelance travel writing business. This week we’ll dive into everything you need to know to get your taxes in gear this years. We are not licensed tax advisors, but unfortunately most accountants don’t know the nitty gritty of this profession, so we’ll steer you the right way.
• Taking Control of Your Freelance Travel Writing Time: In this webinar on Taking Control of Your Freelance Travel Writing Time–the single most important groundwork I lay with our coaching program members so that they can handle the work they want to do when it starts coming in–we’ll dive into the number one difference I see between the people who “do it” and those that don’t: how they spend their freelance time–you always have choices.
• Taking Control of How You Track and Reach Your Freelance Travel Writing Goals : In the third hour of our series on running the operations of your freelance travel writing business, we expand the the big picture and how to ensure your big dreams become tangible reality. To grow your travel writing income, you need a reliable, repeatable system for ensuring your have your eye on your benchmarks and pivot to meet them. We’ll explore how to adopt the systems big businesses use to great success for your solopreneaur writing business.
  
• Taking Control of Your Ideas, Pitches and Follow-ups: In the final chapter in our series on operating the business side of your freelance travel writing business, we explore how to capture ideas the second you have them, store them for later, and how to adapt best practices to what works for you.
  
• Story Structure to Take Your Features to the Next Level: Whether you’ve been scared of taking the leap into features because you’re “not that kind of writer” or have been wanting to move into features (or even starting to get those assignments) but spend an inordinate amount of time trying to research and structure those pieces so it feels like more work than it’s worth, this webinar is for you. We explore classic story structures that have been employed, literally, for millennia to guarantee an interesting story as well as travel feature-specific story structures that will have you turning out stories in an hour or two each.
• The Difference Between the Photos You’re Shooting Now and What Magazines Are Publishing: Learn how to get the shots that editors need so you can get more assignments and make more money with your pieces. We look at the shots that work online and those that most of us shoot most of the time and what the difference is in terms of the approach to shot format, variety, and composition to generate the types of photos magazines can use.
  
• Putting Together a Pitch Portfolio to Support a Big Trip: Here we walk through several press trip itineraries to show who and what to pitch to set up a varied portfolio of coverage for each trip. We discuss five techniques you can use to ensure an impressive pitch portfolio to accompany any press trip request, and how to handle this process whether you’ve never been published and have no connections or have editors that you work with already but perhaps want to branch out to a new subject or geographic area.
• How to Build Serious Business Partnerships at Travel Conferences: In How to Build Serious Business Partnerships at Travel Conferences , we’ll look at how to prepare for meetings at conferences, how to rock them, and how to follow up.
  

Delivery: To redeem this offer, head to our webinar library and load up your cart with the 11 webinars listed above, then use the coupon chooseyourown to take more than 75% off of your order and grab this package of pitching webinars for just $56 rather than the full price–$209.

Delivery details:

• In the webinar library, add all of the webinars listed above to your cart and enter the code chooseyourown.
• You need to have all 11 webinars of your choosing in your cart for the coupon code to take effect.
• If you have previously purchased one of the webinars in the set, that will preclude you from adding that specific webinar to your cart. We set up new test accounts attached to different email addresses to get around this issue, and recommend you do the same if you are running into this issue as it is the only work around.
• The webinars will be available immediately in your user profile on webinars.dreamoftravelwriting.com, and you will also receive an email for each webinar with the links to the downloadable audio, video, and transcript files.

This offer has now ended. Thank you!

Today’s holiday trivia: “Nollaig na mBan” or “Women’s Little Christmas” is a tradition celebrated by women across Ireland on January 6. Hearkening back to the days when large families were the norm and men weren’t expected to help around the home, Women’s Little Christmas represented the one day each year when women would finally get a break. To this day, men take over the housework on January 6, while women hold parties or go out to celebrate the day with their friends, sisters, mothers, and aunts.

Beginning in January of 2018 and continuing throughout much of the year, we embarked on a multi-month webinar series with a very special goal in mind: to provide university-style writing training in how to write each of the different types of articles you may be tasked with as a professional travel writer.

We walked through a part of the writing process–structuring your articles–that should come before your fingers hit the keyboard and before you even begin researching your piece to show you how to quit second-guessing yourself and save tremendous time on your articles.

In each hour, we tackled one specific article format, and covered:

• what type of magazines that type of article appears in
• what you need to know to pitch that sort of piece
• the benefits and drawbacks of writing that type of article
• the repeatable scaffold structure you can use every time you write that kind of piece
• how the structure plays out in real-world examples from major print magazines of each article type

Freelance writers’ bank accounts depend on their hourly rates. Doing the same work more efficiently, with less doubt, and using proven, repeatable systems is how you not only earn more per hour, but also ensure better quality articles and more consistent quality for yourself (for your own round of edits) and your editors.

I created this series most of all, however, because I wanted to demonstrate how to structure different types of articles so you could broaden your horizons to new types of writing that you may have been too tentative to try before.

The results for viewers have been instantaneous.

Two very savvy and smart listeners transitioning from academic backgrounds to journalism who had not yet been published in a magazine–in part because imposter syndrome and perfectionism stymied them from completing pitches and getting them out–told me right away that the structural approach to putting together they learned in these webinars inspired them to pitch pieces they thought they’d have to wait years to work on.

“The nuts and bolts webinar gave me confidence in my storytelling and ability to properly structure a story!“

I’m delighted to report that they both had their first pieces published very shortly after that.

Over the course of 2019, we went through 13 different article formats in three main groupings:

• short (front-of-book and back-of-book) articles:
  • news briefs
  • front-of-book round-ups
  • trend pieces
  • business profiles
  • “postcards”
• feature-style articles
  • quest pieces
  • guide features
  • basket-of-kittens features
  • diary pieces
• interview-centric articles
  • as-told-to features
  • profile pieces
  • interview pieces
  • celebrity favorites pieces

People sometimes ask me if these are the “correct” names for these article types, but it’s hard to say, because, one of the reasons I wanted to put together such a detailed series is that no one really covers this. specially not to the level of depth of incorporating primary source material in the form of articles published in major, mainstream travel magazines.

I’ve always been frustrated by how most travel writing programs approach this.

Not only do they typically forgo giving you a systematic (and thus tried-and-true and efficient!) method to writing an article, if they give you any specific “training” on writing pieces, it often goes something like this:

• You’re asked to come up with an idea out of the blue.
• You’re expected to write it with no particular magazine or format as a framework.
• You’re given feedback on that one specific article (unsaleable because it’s pre-written without an approved pitch!) without any guidance really about what to do the next time you want to write an article–especially something different.
  

This kills me. You completely miss out on:

• coming to grips with how rigid magazine formats can be (which saves you tons of drafting time trying to decide what to write)
• understanding how to mold your article idea for different types of articles (and all of the excellent resale value that lies there!)
• using the leg-up a predefined structure gives you on dictating exactly what research does (and does not) need to be done
• building confidence that you can complete whatever article you are assigned, even if the editor shifts away from the way you originally presented your idea

Today is the very first day that our complete, 13-part series is available in our webinar library, and to mark the occasion and cap off this winter’s 12 days of holiday specials, we are giving you the whole set for $180 off.

To take advantage of this offer and grab these 13 webinars just $67–nearly 70 percent off the normal pricing–head to the webinar library, and load up your cart with all of the Article Nuts and Bolts webinars and enter the code bakersdozen for your discount to take effect.

At the regular price ($19 each), this much content would typically set you back nearly $250, as it is basically a 13-week college course in and of itself. For each webinar, you’ll receive:

• streamable high-def video
• smaller downloadable video
• streamable and downloadable audio file
• full transcript available to read on screen or as PDF download
• all webinar slides in PDF form
• any applicable worksheets

Until midnight EST today only, grab our bakers dozen of Article Nuts and Bolts webinars for just $67 with code bakersdozen.

Delivery details:

• In the webinar library, add all of the webinars listed above to your cart and enter the code bakersdozen.
• You need to have all 13 Article Nuts and Bolts webinars in your cart for the coupon code to take effect.
• If you have previously purchased one of the webinars in the set, that will preclude you from adding that specific webinar to your cart. We set up new test accounts attached to different email addresses to get around this issue, and recommend you do the same if you are running into this issue as it is the only work around.
• The webinars will be available immediately in your user profile on webinars.dreamoftravelwriting.com, and you will also receive an email for each webinar with the links to the downloadable audio, video, and transcript files.
• The shopping cart will automatically alert you if it cannot apply the coupon, because the wrong webinars are in the cart.