Travel writing--what's wrong with this rosy picture?

I’ve just received an offer for travel writing training that paints a wonderful picture of the life of a travel writer—first class air travel, staying free at great resorts, being wined and dined… Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?

The problem is that, for the most part, it’s about 50 years out of date.

These days, when you want to do some research about a travel destination, where do you go? Increasingly, it’s the internet and what we look for is reviews by other visitors. I’d be willing to bet that the sales of the traditional travel guidebooks are declining, maybe moribund. Soon you’ll automatically turn to your iPhone for other portable device.

By the way, there are also people out there trying to tell you that you can make a lot of money snapping travel pictures (if you buy their course). Wrong again--if anything, the outlook there is even worse than for travel writers because it's so easy now to get stock photography literally for pennies--some publications even lift them off flickr for free. (I get many of the photos and graphics I use on this blog from clipart.com, with unlimited access for an annual subscription of around $160. These are low resolution images, fine for online use; higher resolution versions for print publication have to be bought individually.)

Sure, newspapers (themselves in trouble) still have travel sections to support the ads but many of the articles that fill the space between the ads are syndicated and appear in hundreds of papers. The well-established writers who provide these article do get in on some excellent freebies. Furthermore, if you can come up with a unique angle to travel writing I’m sure there are still some great opportunities.

However, if someone tries to tell you that starting out now as a travel writer or photgrapher is an easy and profitable path, get yourself a very large grain of salt.

(You'll find more 'tell it like it is' advice on writing in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)