GoNOMAD.com Writer's Guidelines

GoNOMAD prides itself on providing excellent, entertaining, informative and unique travel articles and research about destinations, activities and experiences. No glossy magazine fluff, no standard guidebook descriptions, no promotional hype; just honest, accurate, well-written and detailed articles and destination guides that speak to an educated, curious and well-traveled audience.

TIP! Read the stories we have up on the site, and format your story the same way. We like short paragraphs, subheads between every few paragraphs, and photos with detailed captions.

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GoNOMAD is always looking for talented, dedicated travel writers, photographers and researchers to join our team.

We welcome queries and articles from professional travel writers and travelers with a strong writing style and something unique to share with our audience. We pay for articles that are high quality, informative and provide useful guidance for a future traveler.

TIP! If you have a website, add a link to GoNOMAD's writer's guidelines or to a story on GoNOMAD that you like. If you query us and show us a link you've put up, we'll move you to the top of the list.

Add GoNOMAD's writer's guidelines and your story link to Facebook and other social networks to help us pass the word. We love a good Twitter as much as the next guy! Help promote us as we publish your travel writing.

And the list is long, so bear with us if it takes a while to see your story published. Writers who contribute to GoNOMAD have also been published in the Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post and hundreds of other prestigious titles...but they love being on GoNOMAD because it's so accessible and easy to find on the web.

Beth Whitman, Max Hartshorne and Kent St. John talk about branding and about travel writing at the NY Times Travel show, February 2011.

TIP! We are currently trying to fill in gaps in our story library. We want additional features about the following places the most. An article set in one of these destinations will move you to the top of the list.

Countries: Angola, Benin, Gambia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Mozambique, Maldives. Lebanon, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia.

States Delaware, Indiana, Mississippi, No. Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, Arkansas, DC, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Idaho.

We also encourage you to be creative: Send us a audio recording (mp3) and photos to go with it; send us a photo gallery and travelogue about an exciting trip; shoot a one-minute video that we can place next to your story, develop a new theme about our kind of travel.

We will also include your email in the story so that readers can contact you with their feedback, and are happy to include links to personal websites and mention any books or publications you've written for.

TIP! Subscribe to GoNOMAD's monthly newsletter (see link at left) to keep up with what we're publishing and so you'll know what we're all about.

Please read these Writers' Guidelines carefully before submitting. If you have any further questions, please e-mail the editor. PLEASE DO NOT CALL WITH QUESTIONS. Really.

GoNOMAD CURRENTLY ACCEPTS FREELANCE ARTICLES FOR OUR FEATURES DEPARTMENT

TIP! Make it easy for us...SEND EVERYTHING IN ONE EMAIL!! Don't make us try to find what we need in three different emails, instead give us an easy to use package: a link to your photos, your article and your headshot, bio, email and blog links.

FEATURE ARTICLES

Feature articles must cover a unique aspect of the cultural or natural environments of our featured destinations. We like up-to-date destination guides about fascinating places. But we've also published stories about a single New York neighborhood, or a place you can visit in New Orleans that takes you back in time. A short visit isn't going to give you enough knowledge to write a guidebook, so instead of trying to cover it all, pick a really interesting feature, or aspect, and run with that.

Everything you need to write a fantastic travel story is in this bag! Camera, notebook, pen and sunglasses.

Start with where you live...if you can write a good guide to your neck of the woods, that is the perfect start. Read the site, pick up the style in which we present our ideas, and follow suit. DETAILS ARE IMPORTANT!

TIP! Specifics are very important. Don't generalize, give us the names, addresses, phone numbers, prices and websites. Give us the details we'll need if we want to go there.

Stories should be anywhere from 800 to 2,000 words long. but most of the stories we use are best at about 1400 words. Try to stay focused on the main theme, but don't hesitate to include interesting asides. The only limitation should be the reader's interest.

Specifically, we are accepting queries and articles that fit within the following departments: 

• Journeys
  A first-person account of a unique journey.
  
  
• Features about an aspect of a place or an experience that you can share which provides a special insight into a place, a community or a country.
  
  
• Destination guides to your favorite region/city.

• Go Local
  Know of a way to get really close to the local culture or environment of a destination? Tell us about learning, volunteer or other alternative travel opportunities that really engage you with local culture. With sidebar contact.

• Destinations
  Tell us about a specific destination, including travel details sidebar (lodgings, getting there, tours or activities, restaurants, markets, arts, health and safety, etc.) Follow the format of some of the articles on the site. WE CURRENTLY ARE SEEKING MORE STORIES ABOUT WOMEN"S TRAVEL, FAMILY TRAVEL, and features about great travel experiences. We are not as interested in long descriptions of your trip, but of a highlighted event, place or lodging that would really make some else's trip better had they known about it.
  
  Below is a description of what we regularly publish:
  

  DESTINATION MINI-GUIDES

  Destination Mini-Guides are shorter guides to a specific, singular destination. Essentially, extended bullet-lists, they include the following info with of course, many photos to show and tell what is worth knowing about for the place you are writing about:

  • Destination
  • Why Go?
  • When to Go
  • Getting there and around
  • Best Attraction
  • Best Unusual Attraction
  • Best Activity or Tour
  • Best Alternative
  • Best Lodgings
  • Best Eats
  • Best Shopping (if appropriate)
  • Note (anything else important)
  
  · Sidebar Requirements
  
  All sidebars must include names of businesses mentioned in the article along with contact information, prices, availability, and amenities. Please include as many relevant web sites as possible.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURES

Queries

For features, query first with a one-page email describing the proposed article, dates of trip, writer's background and/or writing experience, which department the article is for, date of delivery and whether or not the article has been published elsewhere. Don't send us a query that is too long.

It's often easier to just send us the story and the photo link instead of a query if you're already finished with it.

Please send us the MSWord file, low res photos, detailed photo captions, a headshot of yourself and a one-sentence bio to accompany your story. Put the headshot in your photo gallery.

Tell us about your publications credits, and indicate availability and format of photographs. Queries are accepted by e-mail, fax or mail. NO PHONE CALLS. Query must include your name, address, phone/fax and e-mail and a SASE for return of materials. Response time for queries is 3-5 weeks.

Unsolicited Articles

GoNOMAD.com also accepts unsolicited feature article submissions, but read our guidelines carefully! Please submit documents as MSWord or text only attachments with your name, address, phone/fax/email and word count on the first page, and your name on each subsequent page.

Photographs

TIP! Use Google's Picasa program, or other similar site to create an online photo gallery and send the link to us. This enables you to write all of the captions and we can easily retrieve the photos to use with your article. Sending many different jpegs wastes a lot of time and we prefer this method.

Make sure that your gallery is viewable to the public.

Do not send jpegs. We receive hundreds and hundreds of stories and the weight of all those jpegs can cause our inbox to crash.

Photos are the biggest challenge we face, and writers who don't submit their photos this way are put on the bottom of our list.

It's best to post them to Picasa and send us a link.

BE SURE THAT YOU OWN THE RIGHTS TO ANY PHOTOS YOU SUBMIT!

GoNOMAD will not be liable for any copyright issues regarding unauthorized use of photographs. It is up to you to make sure that we have permission to reprint any other person's photos.

It is best to shoot your own photos and submit only these, or obtain permission from tour operators and tourist boards so that any photos sent to us can be legally used on our site. Please indicate the name of the photographers so that we can put photo credits next to all images.

All photographs must be clearly marked with photographer's name, names of subjects (if possible or applicable), and descriptions of people and places and activities in the photo. In some cases, photographs of people must have subjects' permission for publication. Proof of permission may be required.

Please include a headshot in your image gallery and one-sentence bio of yourself with your submission.

Contact

Queries and submissions may be sent to us by email or mailed to:

Max Hartshorne, Editor
GoNOMAD
P.O. Box 4
South Deerfield, MA 01373

RIGHTS

GoNOMAD purchases First Worldwide Electronic Rights. GoNOMAD retains the right to archive and reprint all articles and guides for four years after initial publication. GoNOMAD has content sharing agreements with several major print-media publishing organizations, content may be reused in this fashion. We also publish ebooks and we will be using much of our site content for this new medium.

We will occasionally purchase reprint rights for material that has not appeared previously in another publication or web site catering to our audience. Simultaneous submissions should be clearly noted ...but we are not fond of them.

PAYMENT

GoNOMAD can offer writers links to their personal or business websites and include writer's email addresses so that readers can provide feedback to you. Photos are important and should be included with your submission. We do not pay for book excerpts or reprints, but are happy to review them (1500 words maximum). At this time we are not paying for feature stories because of difficult headwinds we are facing in business. If you have submitted a story and need to be paid, we respect your decision and will not use your material without your ok. We hope to be able to resume paying for articles again soon.

Authors who have had articles accepted must email a simple invoice to editor Max Hartshorne with your postal address, phone number and other contact information and a check will be sent to you by mail. If you are overseas, and cannot accept a check in US dollars, we are happy to pay you with Paypal.

Questions? email us