My view is that the only person you're doing the trip(s) for is yourself. A personal (and public = blog, vlog etc) is great for you and your closer friends and family, should they be interested.

Other people on forums and social media will find you if the words/ pictures/ videos are genuinely worth reading/ looking at/ watching. If nobody clocks you, no problem: It's all just for your memories anyway. :thumbup1:

If you want to become a legend in your own lunchtime, you'll have to be very big into self promotion and spamming the internet, which will only endear you to the sycophants and be detrimental to reaching the other 95%.

There are plenty of self-proclaimed "adventure bike riding personalities" (sarcasm intentional!) who despite having mastered how to write at school and who own camera equipment are neither authors, nor photo-/video-graphers.

PS. If you own a selfie stick, please do everyone a favour and stick it where the sun never shines. :Beach: If you ever take a picture of a plate of food and publish it, I promise I'll block/hide/unfollow/unfriend/all of the above you! :mchappy:

We seem to have zeroed in on books but there's plenty of other options available. Books do seem to take the most time to do though - a year to do my last one vs an hour and a half this morning to do a short article for a magazine - and that included sorting out the pictures in Photoshop.

I still think that, in the same way that one swallow doesn't make a summer, a batch of books from the usual suspects doesn't saturate a market. Yes there's some big name scribblers in the bike travel world but there's a huge armchair biker audience out there. I've seen people like Zoe Cano chasing that market at auto jumbles, vintage rallies and the like and, judging by the way her pile of books diminishes during the day, seemingly doing well.

People are always buying new books and, from the popularity of my local Oxfam shop, many secondhand ones as well despite there only being, what is it, seven basic plots? Doesn't stop them reading the same story over and over with only the names changed as a holiday beach read. Amazon makes it so easy to self publish these things that there's nothing to lose but your time and as many people find writing a pleasure rather than a chore it's time considered well spent.

I agree with B.O.B.
You only have to see the amount of people that go to Adventure bike rallies and follow bloggers such as itchy boots to see there is a huge amount of interest in motorcycle travel.
Don’t forget how many people buy books like A Year In Provence without the slightest inclination of moving abroad.
My wife and I have been having mini motorcycle trips of a month every year for the past 25 and the furthest I ever got with a personal diary was 3 days doh but that’s just me :D
If you’ve got the time and inclination write a blog as you go like Tigger RTW if only for your own memories. Then you have all the information and can write a book at some stage if you so wish - this seems to me to be a flexible approach.

I think it’s about expectations. My wife has just done a motorcycle trip and unexpectedly the conditions turned out extreme. Loads of non biking people are really interested and love the photos. She didn’t tell loads of people she was doing it, word just got around - now she’s being interviewed on BBC local radio.

Write a blog for yourself - and me of course beer - with no expectations, then what will be will be.
bier

Thanks for all you comments,

I take on board all of you comments and I think the different opinions do demonstrate that each person has their own personal likes and dislikes in respect of such matters and this in turn, has focused my own mind a little more.

I am now swayed towards doing a blog and that it should be about what I want to write about and if it is of interest to anyone or anyone can take something from it then that is just a byproduct.

With regard to owning a selfie stick, if you have ever seen any photographs that I have uploaded anywhere, you may notice that I never feature in them. That's because as one of my former colleagues told me " Tom, you have ha face for radio!"

I don't have a particular issue with selfies, per say. More with sticks and how dangerous they are, particularly when morons are waving them around at motorcycle races. Both sticks next to the racetrack and drones within a several km radius are forbidden at the IoM TT, for example. IMHO, 99% of the population are BOBFOC (Body of Baywatch, Face of Crimewatch) or BOCFOC, although in the age of social media you can be whatever your personal life coach, alcohol or the shouty shouty tracksuit wearing types tell you, you are. doh

As far as bike travel diaries over the past 2 decades go, maybe check my (unsuccessful, but I still like my stuff... :innocent: ) internet presence.

1. Around the millenium: all super keen, sponsored on RTW trip, 10 magazine articles, pictured IN (!!!!) a BMW1150GSA brochure :rofl: etc.

2. Early 2000s onwards, until about 2014: Build a website from first principles (see red link below), but after a while, can't be bothered messing with it any more.

3. 2005 or so. Decide it's all bollox and the bike travel fraternity is populated with a large minority of bullsh!tters and publicity seeking narcissist spammers. Or maybe as the shouty shouty types do all the shouting, normal and pleasant travellers never get heard or seen?

4. Wrote a few ride reports on this HU-forum and advrider (See green link below and also from the homepage of the red link). Linked from social media to these RRs too. (The green trip finished in 2016... I've also travelled a lot since, but couldn't be bothered with any fora anymore).

5. Social media appears on the scene and all regular websites and fora start to die a slow death. I create my personal Facebook "timeline" and post a few words and pics exclusively for my FB "friends".

6. Early in 2019: Created an Instagram profile that also feeds a Facebook "page" ( BrightysJollys ) where I've posted a few of my favourite pictures, and words I find relevant. After my trip this summer I now have just over 200 Instagram "followers" (the most popular Instagramer is Cristiano Ronaldo, the footballer who has 185 million followers, not including me :mchappy: ) and 300 Facebook page "likes". I find the most popular pictures and hence posts (judged by positive comments and likes/reactions) are selfies (!!) :smartass::smartass::smartass: and landscapes, but only with a lot of sun/ blue sky.

I also share the BrightysJollys Facebook page to my personal Facebook timeline and the HU Facebook Group (when I'm not banned from there for daring to try to sell a bike travel related service in their "for sale" section! :Beach: :D :rofl: :blushing: )

I don't bother with Twitter because it just seems full of Z-list celebrity rants and pictures of plates of food/kittens/vomit. I also never bothered with dedicated blogging software because, since social media, nobody goes there anyway.

Also recently set up my (not IT proficient) parents with a Facebook account so they can look at my public words and pictures. It also saves me the extra work sending all my words and pictures to them via email :clap:

It still is pal....!!!!