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How to be a Bradt author and travel-writing guidelines
Do you think you could become the next Bradt author? At Bradt Travel Guides we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of publishing guides to unusual destinations – or unusual guides to rather more mainstream places. We do not publish travel narratives. We currently have around 100 titles on our list, and work very much in partnership with our authors.
Our ideal author is a traveller who can write both with accuracy and with enthusiasm. You’ll need to be able to demonstrate a genuine interest in a destination – either through personal experience of travel in that country, or through related travel elsewhere. For example, if you were to suggest a guide to Libya, we would ideally be looking for personal knowledge of the country itself, but would consider someone with a proven interest in, and practical knowledge of, the Arab world in general.
Our authors work on a royalty basis, and as such maintain their involvement with their guide, often for many years. For this reason, we are not regularly looking for writers to update existing books, although such opportunities do occasionally arise.
TRAVEL-WRITING GUIDELINES
Essentially, there are no specific qualifications for writing a travel guide. Enthusiasm, determination, focus, thorough research and a willingness to go the extra mile all help. An ability to write engagingly without losing the plot, while sticking to a publisher’s housestyle guidelines, is crucial. You’ll need to combine perseverance with perfectionism to ensure that you obtain full contact details and prices, and then add in a basic understanding of maps, which need to be compiled as you go along. And forget the glamour: it's poorly paid, time consuming and very hard work – but it still suits some people.
Opportunities for honing travel-writing skills are many. For a start, read as wide a variety of travel writing as you can find – from newspaper articles to travel narrative, from travel guides to biography. Enter travel-writing competitions when they come up – we at Bradt Travel Guides run at least two a year, and sometimes more, so keep checking our website. Consider going on a travel-writing course – there are several out there, including those organised by Travellers’ Tales (www.travellerstales.org). We run our own one-day travel-writing course each year in September, so keep an eye on our events page. Finally, practise writing – in different styles, for different publications.
Getting your work published is the next stage. If you have a particular slant on a destination, such as music, or art, consider offering a box to us for publication in the relevant guide. We rarely pay for a first submission such as this, but it’s good experience and can open the door to something more concrete. If you want to write guidebooks for Bradt, you'll need to research our list and come up with something that you feel you would be qualified to write. We'd need to see and pass a sample of writing, and would then consider any proposal that you would make.
Very occasionally we have a guide that needs updating where the author doesn't have the time, and in that case we would commission someone else to do the work. When this happens, we’re looking for someone with a proven ability to write, and ideally a prior knowledge of the country, or at the very least of the region. That said, the criteria for this, as for any form of travel writing, remain the same: they start with enthusiasm and commitment.
What to do next
If you’d like to join us, please send us in the first instance your CV, to include any writing and travel experience, together with a brief summary of your proposal(s), for the attention of Emma Thomson. Do your research first, though. Check our website or catalogue to ensure that we don’t already cover your preferred destination. Look at the competition – if there are already several guides, how could you do better? And if this is a ‘first’, why should it be published?
Should we be interested, we will ask you to supply an unedited sample of writing of around 500 words on a destination of your choice.
From there, we would work with you to compile a formal proposal, an outline of contents and a list of maps, before committing to any new projects.
We’re a friendly and dedicated team, and there are always openings for the right people, so please don’t hesitate to contact us.
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