Want to see your story in Austin Traveler Magazine? Here are the themes we'll be working with for the first three issues, along with some questions to get you thinking:
Spring
Documenting - Think outside the photo box.
We all take lots of photos, but there are other ways to capture and share our travels. What are your tips (or warnings)? Do you have journal excerpts or sketchbook pages to share? Are there ways you've captured not only the sights but the sounds, smells or textures of a place? And what's the big blogging deal?
What are some of the unusual things you've brought back as mementos? Is there something you take out and look at again and again? How does it capture the spirit of your trip?
And what do you do with all this stuff when you get home? Any tips on organizing or displaying all those photos, museum tickets or stained beer mats?
Stories might involve something that happened while you were taking photos, collecting ephemera along the way or maybe filming things that you probably shouldn't have.
Summer
Finding your inner Indiana Jones - Tales straight out of an adventure movie.
Have you ever found yourself in a situation while traveling that could have been a Hollywood blockbuster?
What's the most adventurous trip you've taken? Why did you do it and what did you get from it?
Tell us about facing physical challenges in your travels, surviving danger or pushing yourself to do things you never thought you were capable of.
Fall
You are your baggage: Lost luggage, impractical packing and what your suitcase says about you
Does how you pack determine what kind of traveler you are? (Are you a backpacker or a roller? Do you weigh everything to travel as lightly as possible or do you want some of the comforts of home with you? Do you pack the night before you leave or weeks in advance? Use checklists or rely on impulses?)
What's your favorite piece of luggage and why?
And how do you get all the new crap - uh, we mean carefully selected gifts and unbelievable bargains - home?
And how about those Customs officials, eh? They're a barrel of laughs, right?
You, if you’re a traveler with a good story to tell and a way with words. You don’t have to be a professional writer, and we’re not looking to see any published clips. Just write up your story and send it in.
Not at the moment, though we intend to pay for content as the magazine builds and becomes wildly successful (touch wood). Our motto now is: Nobody gets paid until everybody gets paid (except the people we absolutely have to pay, such as the printer, who is a really lovely person but not a professional philanthropist). The editor and publisher are not taking salaries in 2005. We’re passionately committed to making this a viable business for the long term, and that means we’re planning for ways to get everyone paid in the future. For now, you’re in it for the glory and the clips.
Austin Traveler is about stories, the kind of stories you tell your friends when you get home from a trip. It’s not so much “Here’s what to do in Budapest” as it is, “I went to Budapest and met this crazy cab driver who took me to this wild restaurant and mayhem ensued.” It’s about the time you were lost and scared and ready to cry and this kind person with whom you couldn’t even converse helped you out. Or how you realized that you had totally misinterpreted some facet of life in another country. Or how something you saw made you laugh until it hurt or stop and re-evaluate your whole pathetic existence (but try to make that one funny!).
If you have info on cool places to stay or eat or ways to get ready for a trip to, say, Budapest, send it on. We may be able to use it in a sidebar or on the Web. It shouldn’t be the focus of your article, though.
Each issue will have a theme, and we’ll group stories around that theme. There are also opportunities to contribute to our departments. (More about that later.)
Each issue will have a general topic for the feature stories. For example, the Summer 2005 issue is “Point A to Point B: Just getting around can be an adventure.” That means the stories all involve methods of transportation during travels.
We’ve set the themes for the three 2005 issues, and we’ll set the themes for 2006 in October. The 2005 Themes are listed at the top left of this page.
You must e-mail it as an attachment to tales@austintravelermagazine.com. The attachment must be a Word doc or saved in rich-text format (RTF). We cannot accept hard copies. Please include your name and contact info in the attachment, and name the file something obvious.
We’d rather not get official query letters and are very unlikely to assign a story. But we’re happy to talk over an idea with you before you submit something. Send a short e-mail to editors@austintravelermagazine.com and tell us about it.
After the content deadline for each issue, we’ll group stories that fit the theme and pick two to three full-length ones (or more if we can combine a series of small stories/vignettes into a larger piece). Great stories that don’t fit in the print version will be on the Web site.
The truth is, it’s a very subjective decision. If we think your story has potential and just needs some tweaks, we’ll be happy to work with you on it. If we don’t think it’s something we can use in the magazine, we’ll let you know, thank you very much and hope that you will find a place to publish it.
We’ll e-mail or call you and talk about the particulars. Please don’t expect a rapid response. Give us a couple of weeks after the content deadline before you follow up with an e-mail.
No. Expect to be edited. We are editors. That’s what we do. We’ll discuss major changes with you. We may also need to cut out portions of your story to get it to fit in the magazine. Feel free to suggest which parts of your story could be cut if needed, but please don’t take editing suggestions personally.
We may also need to chat with you about facts and spellings of names or places, which must be accurate. Please do not write from memory alone. If you can’t remember the name of a castle or the year it was built, look it up. Don’t guess. Someone out there will know it’s wrong. Trust us.
We’d love to have two to three of your best shots that relate to your story. But please broaden your thinking about visual elements that could go with it: a ticket stub in a story about opera or a stained beer mat if beer is involved.
Photos/scans must be at least 300 dpi and in a JPEG or TIFF format
Think “short.” Short is good. We love short. It means we can get more great stuff in.
We’re still figuring out ideal lengths for features and departments, and this could all change. Here are some initial guidelines:
| Content | Description | Word count |
|---|---|---|
| Features | Your stories, either domestic or international, related to the theme of the issue. | In the neighborhood of 800 words (less IS more!) |
| Give Back | Experiences with volunteering and sustainable tourism; eco-tourism; interactions with NGOs and nonprofits, either here or abroad. | 300 to 500 |
| Get Out | Outdoor recreation and adventure opportunities, here or abroad. Heavy focus on introducing beginners to the activity. | 300 to 500 |
| Chow Fun | Local focus on reviews of restaurants, ethnic food markets and cooking classes; ordering tips. | 300 to 500 |
| Rate It | Reviews of travel gadgets, world music CDs, guidebooks, a hotel or restaurant from a trip. (These must be your personal experiences, not marketing blurbs!) | SHORT, SHORT SHORT! (See an issue for the format.) |
| We’re not accepting submissions for Virtual Trip, Chatting Up or What’s On, but we’d love to hear your suggestions. | ||
| Issue | Theme | Deadline (12 midnight) |
|---|---|---|
| Spring | Documenting | January 15 |
| Summer | Indiana Jones |
April 15 |
| Fall |
Luggage | July 15 |
| Winter | TBD | October 15 |
Deadlines and themes for 2006 will be posted on our Web site in October. Please check back.
We’re not paying you, and we don’t think we should unfairly limit your ability to get paid for what you write. HOWEVER, we will be most unhappy if we see something we’ve published in another Central Texas publication. If you want to have to your work published in Austin Traveler Magazine or on our Web site, you must agree not to submit it for publication in Texas for one year from the publication date. (If you get it in Outside magazine, more power to you!) You should not submit an article to us if you’ve submitted it to another publication unless you’ve already gotten a “no thank you.” Publishing it in your personal blog is OK. Just ask us if you have questions.
Austin Traveler will retain the copyright and the ability to use the work in whatever way we see fit for one year from the publication date.
ROTFL, dude. We’re barely covering our own. Any expenses you incur in the course of experiencing or documenting your story are your own. If you want to write things off, check with an accountant.
No, sorry. We’re a startup with little staff and we can only accept submissions electronically, so keep those backups!
For those who know what this means: We’ll be basing style loosely on the Associated Press Stylebook. By “loosely” we mean that we will make up our own rules for things we don’t agree with. This is what happens when a newspaper copy editor becomes a publisher (insert evil laughter here).
If you don’t know what this means, don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of it.
Um, yes. You must disclose any financial interest in something you’re writing about for you or someone close to you. (For example, don’t write a glowing review of your aunt’s restaurant without telling us.) You must guarantee that what you submit is your work and is not taken from someone else’s writing, a random Web site or a bathroom wall.
No.
No.
Yes.