Jen Stevens
How to Avoid Editing Errors
EDITING ERRORS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM Previously, Lori told you how frustrated she was when she read the published version of her piece on Santa Fe's chiles to find that, throughout, "chile" was spelled "chili" and the editor had also (inaccurately) tacked "pepper" onto at least one reference. Those kinds of mistakes do occur. [...]
Ensure One Travel-Writing Gig Leads to Another
Today: *** How One Article Can Beget Another... and Another... *** Let Us Refund Your Money on Every Travel Product You Bought From Us in the Past 12 Months, Details Below... *** Practical Writing Prompt of the Week: Spice Your Articles with a Pinch of History *** Reader Feedback: I Got a Grand Tour *** [...]
How to Win an Editor with Your Headline
Headlines are designed to grab your attention and draw you in. Yet most travel writers all but ignore this aspect of their stories when they send them to an editor. Here are a few tips from freelance writer Jennifer Stevens on how to increase your article sales.
Dispatch #3: Why This Photo and Not That One?
Professional Photographer Riley Caton revealed the most important "trick" to keep in your grab bag of photo skills -- the one thing you can do right now that will most improve your photos and make them instantly more attractive to editors.
Dispatch #1: Who Said Writing Couldn't Be Lucrative?
Dear Travel Writer, Right out there for anybody to see is a lucrative writing opportunity I'm willing to bet you've never noticed before. It's a market that regularly pays $1 or more per word. (That easily translates to hundreds of dollars for just a few short paragraphs.) And it's a market where you probably already [...]
Can You Leave the Country?
A few tips from Jennifer Stevens on how to speed up the process of getting your passport on time.
How Not to Lose your Frequent-Flyer Miles
No use sitting any longer on your frequent-flyer miles. Do so, and you're likely to lose them. Get some tips on how not to lose them.
How to "Localize" a Piece for More Profit
Add "Local" Flavor to Any Article, and You Can Sell It Here... and There Last week I talked about three ways you can improve the odds you'll land a newspaper by-line. (Missed that issue? You'll find it in the archives, here) As I explained in that piece, by "localizing" your article -- that is, tailoring [...]
Not-So-Elusive Benefits of Travel Writing
If you simply learn a few important tricks of the trade about putting an article together and about dealing with editors -- exactly the sorts of things you'll find documented in our archives -- then you'll be well ahead of the majority of new writers (even seasoned writers) out there.
Three Tricks for Breaking into Newspapers
Three Smart Ways to Sell Your Story to a Newspaper's Travel Editor Open any newspaper's travel section and you're bound to see articles picked up off a wire. They're easy to spot. Under the by-line they'll say something like "Los Angeles Times" (though you're reading the Denver Post). It's not that editors don't want other [...]
3 Ways to Repackage (and Resell) an Article
Once you've invested the time and energy in researching, writing, and editing an article, it's a pity to get just one sale out of it. Now, if you maintained some rights to the piece, then you can resell it as-is in non-competing markets. (We've written about this option before. Go here for an article by [...]
Five Query Letter Strategies That Work
Arguably the most important writing you'll do when you're working on an article isn't your text at all -- it's the query letter you write to sell it. You've got about five seconds to catch an editor's attention. That means you must use your first two sentences wisely. Don't waste them by introducing yourself, telling [...]
