How To Become A Lonely Planet Travel Writer - An interview with Simon Sellars

How To Become A Lonely Planet Travel Writer - An interview with Simon Sellars
January 13, 2008
by Chris Mitchell
TravelHappy.info

Veteran Lonely Planet travel writer Simon Sellars gives the lowdown on what it's really like to work for the world's biggest travel guidebook company and how to get your own break writing for them

Intro: Simon Sellars is a freelance writer and editor who has contributed to numerous Lonely Planet titles. Most recently Simon has travelled as a Lonely Planet writer in Micronesia, the Netherlands and Japan and co-edited Lonely Planet Micronations. He is based in Melbourne, Australia. There is plenty more about Simon's travels on his own website simonsellars.com and also his Honshu and Micronesia travel blogs which I've written about before. You can also read my review of The Lonely Planet Story, Tony and Maureen Wheeler's autobiography of how they created Lonely Planet.

On with the interview...

How often do people say to you "Wow, you're a writer for Lonely Planet - that must be the best job in the world!"?

All the time. Travel writing still has this allure, doesn't it? Yet there's nothing glamorous about waiting in a queue at Heathrow for four hours to have your underwear swabbed for explosives. The sheer grind of travel these days - dodging security and surveillance and crowds - means that travelling so much as a writer is not as appealing as it once was. Plus there's a real sense that there's nowhere left to go - that the entire planet has been commodified and quantified via blanket media saturation - meaning it becomes increasingly harder to spin interesting angles.

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