How To (self-) publish your first travel book

First of all, we have to make this clear: the HOW-TO guides is not our best. It might sounds contradictory -or even off-putting- but we are writing this piece of information in order to help and “enlighten” other travellers who are thinking to write their first book, primarily, by having an accumulated experience of 5 years of travelling and 9 months as self-publishers.

To begin with, publishing a book is one of the easiest things in the world. This statement is a combination of positive thinking, past experience as well as a true fact. Do not listen to what the “experts” say and start working your travel writing project TODAY! However, there some things that you must take into consideration which are divided into two stages: the before starting & after finishing your travel book.

Before starting, it means that you have some decent travel experience along with some nice pictures to show. Of course, this is totally unrelated to the way you are travelling (car or motorbike or bicycle or backpack does not really matter), the length of your travels and the number of countries you have visited. You just need some interesting content to inspire you and of course inspire others. Plus talent and writing skills! Remember that you are a traveller, neither a professional author nor a photographer. This applies to the vast majority of seasonal or long term travellers who really want to write a book (a travel narrative or a practical guide) with their experiences, not professional travel writers & photographers whose job is fundamentally travel-related.

After finishing your project and assuming that it went through serious cover design & scrutinous context editing and proofreading, you have two options to make it available to your target audience. Self-publish it or find a publishing house to do it for you. The former is a lonely journey that you have to take along with some risk and capital investment. You need to pay everything out of your pocket (editors, graphic designers, printing store, to name a few) as well as organize every little detail and learn how the whole system works. On the other hand, you have full control of your asset. It means that you plan and implement your own marketing & promotion campaign (presentations, give-aways, public speeches, etc.), you know exactly your sales figures as well as your available stock and finally, all profits end up directly into your pocket.

If you choose to go for a publishing house, be prepared to send 100 (at least) applications, proposal & drafts and wait for their reply (not everybody gets back!). Most of them claim that they are looking for a book with a long-shelf life and obviously, this is hard to say for a new book. At least, they have more experience than us! In the best case scenario that a publisher will be interested, then you can consider it as a little success for your project that involves less stress but also lower revenues. In most cases, they do everything that is needed to bring your piece of art into life, so you can see it one day on the book stores’ shelves. The real catch, in this case, is that the publishing house will rarely tell you the exact number of books that they printed (we know at least one case that they said to the traveller they printed 1.000 copies but instead they printed and eventually sold 2.000). According to these figures, they will give to you your final share (which will barely be over 10% of the retail price), so they prefer not to tell you the whole truth. Assuming that your book is sold for 20 EUR (or USD) and the publisher throws into the market 2.000 copies, you can expect to get from 2.000 to 4.000 EUR/USD maximum. It is definitely not a bad figure but you have to remember that you must deal with an honest publisher to get these money. Besides that, do not expect from your publisher to make any investment on marketing. They already paid for the printing costs which means that you have to take over. Travels around the country (also overseas), press releases, public speeches & presentations must be organised primarily by you if you want to make people familiar with your book and boost your sales.

Both options have lovers & haters, pros & cons and it is a decision you have to take before starting writing. After all, having a big adventure around the world is as easy as it sounds and thousands of people are doing so. Secondly, create a decent reading is also feasible. Even if you have a nice story to tell but not the talent to write it, a more intellectual than you friend or even a professional editor, will help you make it happen.

However, if there is a difficult or even really hard to achieve goal in this type of project, is the publishing of your book and its growth in terms of publicity and of course sales. Why?

• Too much competition
• Demanding readers
• Too much FREE stuff on-line
• Different cultural background
• Need a proven and highly rated social media track record (No Facebook, Instagram & Twitter -like us- means very low sales!)
• Different market orientation/ diversity
• Media world is a mess and you need to know the right people to guide you through

Here is a real life example:

Recently, we self-published our first travel book and now it is available as a paperback as well as an eBook. The creation of the book took us about 4 months (since August 2016) and the editing took another 4 months. In April 2017, we self-published it as an eBook. This way, we managed to raise about 450 EUR out of nothing (publishing an eBook is easy, free and a great way to market yourself).

Having a momentum, we decided to raise money through a very popular crowd-funding platform. So, in June 2017, we launched our campaign in order to basically invite people to pre-order our book and so get the necessary funds for the printing. After a partially successful campaign, about 40 people believed in our project and generously contributed. This way, we managed to raise around 1200 EUR (net amount after taxes, fees and other charges). (If we were more open to the social media, our target of 3.000 EUR would be way more easier to be achieved but this is something that has been already discussed in some Traveliving Series articles like The Social Media Phrenitis, Decisions, Decisions, Decisions, etc.)

After all, the printing and binding did cost 2.150 EUR, so we paid 500 EUR out of our pocket for a potential 14.700 EUR NET PROFIT (we printed 700 copies and we sell them for 21 EUR each).

Having said that, think very thoroughly how you want to carry on and bring your little travel writing project into life. Collective thinking, passion for what we are doing and a great desire to share all our knowledge and past experience makes us your best friend. We would love to hear back & provide the future travel writer with advice, information and insight.

Information about TRAVELIVING, our first travel book, can be found here: https://thepinproject.eu/traveliving...actical-guide/

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The Pin Project | Overland Greece

Well first let me say that I hope it works for you. Anyone who has enough experience to warrant a book, enough talent to write the book and enough persistence to publish the book deserves some kind of reward. Unfortunately for most of DIY authors I've met in recent years, that reward doesn't seem to be a monetary one - or at least if they've made some money, considering how long it all takes the hourly rate is microscopic. Unless, of course, you have some kind of USP that makes the copies fly off the shelf. If, like me, you're overlanding's Mr Average then writing is unlikely to be much more than its own reward.

That doesn't mean it's not worth doing though. If writing is in your blood then you'll write something about any trip you do anyway, whether it's for acclamation, appreciation or information. And there's always the possibility of the tail wagging the dog; where the trip is planned and justified by the requirements of the book; a journey simply to tie up lose literary ends. Just after Christmas I'm heading off for a month or so on my 125 to finish off a saga I started in 2013. I've just got to decide how much effort to put into the photographs (iPhone or a crate full of DSLRs?) and then come up with a snappy title. One way or another though I'll be putting the last full stop in place by late spring. Whether anyone will ever read the result is another matter.

I've sold around 950 copies of my book now, but it's been mighty hard work! I think it cost about £3500-4000 to publish 1000 copies. I was lucky being able to sell quite a few through people associated with the Plymouth Dakar, which the book was about, and also through the folks business, without that I reckon I would still have about half left!

I sold a lot through the local Ottakers, about 100 copies, before they were taken over by Waterstones who buy centrally. That puts a lie to the idea I was told by publishers that there was no demand for travel books (even though the shelves are full of them!). Multiply that 100 by all their branches around the country, and that would be a decent quantity of books!!

Unfortunately, getting your book taken on by mainstream publishing is impossible unless you in the industry, or a celeb.

these days though, digital is the way to go. I am currently working on a kindle version of mine and hope that will sell a few, but you will never get rich like this unless you have a friend like Ewan Mcgregor!!

Your just doing it for the satisfaction, and your own record of your trip.

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1990 Landcruiser H60. Full rebuild completed 2014

I think these days nobody is buying books anymore. There are so many interesding blogs available for free so you could give something back by making your own blog available for free
Offroad Motorrad Weltreisen - das letzte Abenteuer

I thought that all blogs & websites have free access to anybody who is interested. Or no?

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The Pin Project | Overland Greece

Unfortunately the world has been inundated with would be authors not only in travel books but books of all genre over the last 20 years & the world has become skeptical on the % of quality books out there. Has for travel books well they are just now becoming just a labour of love, nearly everyone who spends 6 mths or more on the road thinks they have achieved something great, well they have to themselves but to the greater audience they are just one of thousands & thousands who are doing this everyday, I think if one wants to write a book they really should ask the question "why do I want to do this" is it to make money, is it to get 5 mins of fame & or is it something I want to do for myself. If you answer yes to the 3rd question then the chances are it will appeal to a greater audience, but unless your Jk Rowling you will be working for $2 an hour if your lucky. Riding thru mud rain (what we think is isolated roads) dropped bikes, camping in the bush & the list goes on does not make a book, you need a story of emotion & very few motorbike authors have delivered, has they need to appeal to non riders as well. Just for the record my favourite motorbike book is "Running with the Moon" by Jonny Bealby

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....rather Die Living.....than Live Dying !
www.globetrekkers.net.au

Thoroughly agree with everything written in the above post. Imo, if you're going to sell your book in sufficient numbers, you need a unique selling point. You also have to spend days/weeks at events manning your book selling stand, on the off chance someone wants to buy it.

Also consider the potential animosity you could generate if your "marketing strategy" exclusively involves spamming bike travel forums and Facebook groups. Authors like Sam Manicom and Chris Scott are very aware of how to market their wares properly. Others have annoyed me so much, I refuse to buy their stuff as a matter of principle (including unfriending/ unfollowing them on FB. Unfortunately I also have to unsubscribe from FB groups that still allow people to just appear, try to flog something, then disappear again without also giving knowledge to the community. Otherwise my newsfeed would just be wall to wall identical spam).

I also agree with the sentiment that if you want to share your words, pictures and videos it'll be a lot less hassle and cheaper to just have your own website and/or write a ride report on a travel forum like this one. People can choose to visit it if they want. Just because I can write in the medium of English, doesn't make me an author. Just because I own a camera doesn't make me a photographer of any note. When the mood takes me, I like generating content. For my memories. If others like it too, all the better.

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Brighty's website: TheBrightStuffDotCom

CURRENT RR WITH REGULAR UPDATES: The Wife Takes on Chlamydia: A South American Retrospective

I read lots of books. I read very very few blogs. The vast range of books available in the high street also rather goes against this theory.
I can't download a blog to read on a plane or on the road like I can a book and the literary quality is usually (although not always) significantly better in a book.

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1990 Landcruiser H60. Full rebuild completed 2014

I’ve always regarded blogs and websites as a kind of quick and dirty way of recording your trip, in much the same way as magazine articles. Something that skims the surface of what you spent weeks, months or years doing. As a reader, if all you’re interested in is a kind of edited highlights version they’re perfect. If you want to get across something in greater depth then the book format still has a lot to offer but of course it requires a reader to commit to something more than just flicking the pages of a magazine in W H Smiths.

For example, I did a short trip a couple of years ago and wrote it up when I returned by way of personal memoir. It came to a little over 25,000 words. I then produced a 4000 word version which I uploaded to the ride tales section here and as a result was approached by a journalist who asked if they could use it in their magazine. It would need to be cut down to 1200 words though. All that was left by the time it appeared was just the “shiny” bits, the snow covered peaks. The body of it, the parts that don’t “photograph” well, were all left on the cutting room floor.

That’s a different product to producing a book that has the space to connect ideas, to explore side alleys and to come to a conclusion. I’ve heard it said that you don’t know what you think about something till you’ve written it down and there is something to be said for that. I hardly ever end up with what I intended to write - even this post has drifted away from what I thought I was going to say. Whether anyone else wants to take that journey with you is another matter.

An Inmate over on ADVrider.com and UKGSer.com (I think?) - sums-up maintaining an on-line blog, which goes something like this:

'My blog is my personal journal and is a gift from Me, at the contemporaneous time of writing it .. to The Future Me.

When I'm sitting alone in my condominium retirement flat, with most of my neighbouring flat-owners typically staring out of their windows, waiting for God and wishfully thinking [alas, too late] 'if only' - I'll be re-reading my journals and remembering that maybe, just maybe, I did something a little special and 'off piste' when I had the chance.

Plus the old-biddy chicks in-and-around the condo .. simply won't be able to keep their hands off me! .. '

Now there's forward thinking, eh?!

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Right Way Round ...

That is your choice. The books in the highstreet have passed the professional editor's USP test. A self-publisher or blog writer doesn't need to pass this hurdle.

It is very straight forward to download any online blog: either save the webpage (still in html format) to your device's harddisk for later offline reading in a browser, or "print" it to pdf format, so you can read it on your device later (offline in any pdf viewing software, including a browser) on a plane/train/automobile. Or actually print it onto paper.


A word-limited magazine article is clearly very different to a "proper" book. However, there's really IMO no difference to someone writing a very detailed blog/ride report to a book, other than one might still (today, but not for much longer imho) be on paper. There are some blogs on the HUBB, but especially at Ride Reports - Epic Rides | Adventure Rider where there have been hundreds of thousands or even millions of clicks = "reads".

Those million-plus authors don't reach that popularity by just skimming the surface of their tale. They also don't have all the stress that someone who wants to be "published" will face, as described by the OP. And maybe in a more satisfying way, they can interact with their audience while writing their story.

PS. Having written (and am currently writing...) a Ride Report, it may be dirty, but it ain't quick in any way, shape or form. It take a long time, but as with some "proper" writers, it is a labour of love. As suggested by Keith, I can read it back to myself later, while fending off the other wrinklies in the care home who think I'm a card carrying hero, or as the son of a Colombian mate of mine described me on Facebook: "The f***ing dad of the warriors"

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Brighty's website: TheBrightStuffDotCom

CURRENT RR WITH REGULAR UPDATES: The Wife Takes on Chlamydia: A South American Retrospective

Yeah, I had that plan too! I'm still a bit short of the retirement flat but back in the day we did take notes and pictures with one eye on (our) posterity. The books fell by the wayside but I eventually found enough of the notes to make a start on a website:

Pisquick Tours

Sadly it's failed miserably to attract hordes of "old-biddy chicks" but I live in hope

Wow! Respect.

I can see from Pisquick Tours that you were covering quite serious 2-up moto distances across Europe back in the late 1960s and early '70s.

That was 20 years ahead of me and 'er indoors. And there was us thinking [.. duh?!] back in the day - with obvious self-delusion - that we were trail-blazing pioneers.

You should revive and elaborate upon Pisquick Tours (a fab title btw) and I reckon that throughout your golden years you'll be combing a wrinkly ol' biddy out of your long & bushy white beard every morning - bloody guaranteed!

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Right Way Round ...

An interesting take on publication challenges. Though like anything there are many ways to skin a cat. My wife, Autumn Birt (look her up) has 13 books now to her name. I have three. All have been self published. All cover art, marketing, and sweat done by us. The only outsourcing has been some stock art for the covers and a freelance editor to do the final edit after several rereads. All of our books are available via e-book and also print on demand that allows a person to "buy" hard copy and it shows up like a standard book.

In our opinion, bookstores are quaint and not really applicable to future sales which is a shame but a sign of the times. I now tend to to buy all my book on my kindle for the mobility.

Total cost from start to finish on a book is about $500 at the most and that is pushing it. That being said....it is a lot of work to learn but once the process is learned it becomes easier. The final hurdle however is marketing we would love to push a bit further into the market.]

On a side note: She did have a traditional publisher early on...but told them to take a walk. Too many games and too much $ taken out for the work put in.

Glad to hear from other self-publishers!!!

One question please: what this $500 includes?

Thanks a lot ;-)

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The Pin Project | Overland Greece