Do you have an exceptional piece of travel writing? Don’t let it stay in your hard drive or journal: try one of these contests that offer cash and prizes.
The following are just a few of the travel writing contests that are out there with upcoming deadlines. If you have a good story that you feel might fit with the editorial vision of the publication sponsoring the contest, why not give it a shot, especially if there’s no entry fee?
Editor’s note: [To the editors out there hosting these contests: is there any way you can post with more specific language than "great travel writing"? It's a turn-off when the contest descriptions sound boring as hell. ]
52 Perfect Days
52 Perfect Days is looking for entries about eco-tourism and volunteer tourism trips in the U.S., Mexico or Canada. The 2009 Theme is Responsible Travel: “EcoTourism, AgroTourism, Sustainable Tourism and Voluntourism”
Specs: 1,000 words or less. Supporting photos in .jpg format (at 72 dpi and at least 510 pixels wide) are strongly encouraged. Sidebar of all mentioned locations with web address, phone number and address.
The Booty: Trip to Kauai, a new website, daypack…etc.
Deadline: October 31, 2009.
FTF Teen Travel Writing Scholarship
FTF Teen Travel Writing Scholarship is looking for essays describing where you traveled to and what it meant to you. What worked and what didn’t work? What you learned from the trip, how did it change you?
The Specs: Applicants must be ages 13-18 and attending grades 8-12 as of May 15, 2009. Essays must be no more than 600 words in length. All applicants must sign up for the travelBIGO.com community prior to submitting an essay.
The Booty: First Place: $1,000, Second Place: $500, Third Place: $200
Deadline: September 27, 2009
Transitions Abroad
Transitions Abroad is seeking inspiring articles which also provide in-depth practical descriptions of your experience moving and living abroad, including discussions of immigration, personal and family life abroad, housing, work, social interactions with the natives, food, culture, study, language learning, and potential prejudices encountered.
The Specs: Unpublished essay of up to 1,500 words. Supporting photos in .jpg or .gif format are welcome.
The Booty: First Place: $500, Second Place: $150,Third Place: $100
Deadline: February 15, 2010
Best Travel Writing’s Solas Award
Solas awards is looking for “Good travel writing,” everything from adventure travel to elder travel.
The Specs: $20 entry fee
The Booty: First Place: $1,000, Second Place:$750, Third Place: $500
Deadline: September 21, 2009
Community Connection
One of the most comprehensive resources online for writing contests is New Pages. Most of the listings here are for literary magazines–poetry and short stories–however some are for nonfiction as well, and in general, it’s a good idea to have these magazines on your radar screen.
Also, have you checked out the Bounty Board lately? Matador is always looking for solid writers.
Finally, know of any other good travel writing contests? Shout them out in the comments, please.
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17 Comments... join the discussion!
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sorry about that Joanna, and thanks for the heads up.
just pulled that one down.
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Thanks for the contest info – very useful!!!
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Thanks, Josh. This page is going in my bookmarks for further use.
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How about the Trazzler monthly contest? Write just around 150 words for the theme of the month and you can win a $250 contract to write ten more articles of only about 150 words – all travel related. I entered this past month (winners are still to be announced.) Their summer contest they promise to be “really, really big.”
And I found out about this from Nick Rowlands – not trying to steal his thunder. I think it’s a great way to possibly make some pretty good money.
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Actually, I’ve heard from a lot of people that Trazzler is pretty much a big content mill. There are a lot of writers who’ve written for them with the expectation/hope of getting a longer contract only to find out that actually, the site just wants to add to it’s collection of articles (without paying anything!) and it keeps dangling the promise of a contract out there.
Trazzler has been disparaged on a lot of writing sites and I’d stay away from it. Just what I’ve heard, though, so could be wrong!
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Julie turned me on to it a while ago; has anyone on Matador gotten this so-called $1500/month?
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I’ve had a few conversations with people recently about Trazzler.
I understand the criticism of the site, although I disagree with it. I think they came up with a very clever way of generating a lot of content for their site, by encouraging people to send in short trips, in the hopes of scoring a freelance writing contract.
They are very open about the way it all works. You submit a trip, and it gets published on the net. If they think your trip is any good (or perhaps more accurately, if it fits with their style), it will probably be selected to be a “Trazzler” trip – which means it goes in to their trip stream, and is seen by lots more people. No payment is involved with any of this.
The nub of it all is this: if they like your writing, you MAY be offered a paid contract to write some trips. There is no guarantee that submitting trips will win you a contract. You simply have to submit some good trips, as few or as many as you like, and hope they are noticed, and fit. A good way to get noticed is to enter the monthly competition. If you are selected as a winner, you win a contract. Even if you aren’t, the competition entry trips are read first, so you are increasing your chances of your super-cool trips being seen. Trazzler is a small team, and I think they have been somewhat overwhelmed, so all of this can take time.
I submitted some trips, which I thought were good. When two days had passed, and they weren’t already knocking on my door asking me to write for them, I forgot about the site. Then all of a sudden, they were published. So I entered a few trips in to the competition. They didn’t win, but they did score me a contract. I wrote a block of ten trips for $250, and was paid within a day of submitting them.
Since then, I’ve submitted a few more trips, which have been published quickly, but I’ve had no more offers of paid work. I’m assured I’m on the list of writers they want to work with, though I’m not quite sure what that means! Like everyone else, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for one of the elusive Community Manager positions ; )
I keep meaning to go back and submit more trips – not just because I’m hoping for more paid work, but because I genuinely admire the site. I think what they are doing is interesting, and innovative.
My only real gripe is that they are not that good at keeping in touch with their writers – I’m listed as a freelancer on their “about” page, but don’t really know what that stands for. But then again, I’m not very good at keeping in touch with my mum, and I suspect she’s more important to me than I am to Trazzler ; )
So while I sympathise with people’s frustration, I don’t think you can accuse Trazzler of anything particularly sinister. Besides, submitting the trips isn’t that much different to pitching editors at a publication (and being ignored before you are rejected, and occasionally striking gold), but they are a lot more fun to write.
Advice? Submit some good trips to the competition. Have a look at the trips written by people already listed as freelancers – a lot of it is about nailing the right style (as with any publication). Why not start with the trips on my profile?!! http://www.trazzler.com/users/nickrowlands
Good luck!↵ -
Hi Nick,
I think the concern writers have with Trazzler is this statement that you noted: “Besides, submitting the trips isn’t that much different to pitching editors at a publication (and being ignored before you are rejected, and occasionally striking gold), but they are a lot more fun to write.”
It isn’t the same as pitching to an editor. If something isn’t accepted by an editor (whether you receive acknowledgement of rejection or not), you can move on to another editor. I also have submitted a few trips to Trazzler via the contest in hopes of winning a freelance contract and I didn’t win, which is fine. I receive “rejections” all the time in the writing world. But the problem is that you can’t just submit a trip for consideration; you MUST publish it on their site, which means most writers on the site are writing for free in hopes of getting paid. I think many writers would be more open to submitting trips for consideration, then receiving a rejection without having their work published unpaid. Once these are published on Trazzler (paid or unpaid), they are published, and we can’t submit them anywhere else as anything more than reprints thereafter.
That said, I am just one person so others might not feel the same way, and that doesn’t mean I won’t try to grab a Trazzler contract again some time, but it does make me a bit concerned that my trips are out there for everyone to read. Not only have I received no compensation for them, but I’ve lost first rights on the pieces.
I would suggest to anyone concerned about Trazzler to find somewhere else to submit work. Just like anything else in life, if you don’t like it, find somewhere else to play.
Cheers,
JoAnna↵ -
Hey JoAnna,
You’re absolutely right: submitting a trip to Trazzler is different to pitching an editor. My apologies: it was 4 am when I posted my comment, and I was not as rigorous as I should have been. I was musing more along the lines of being in limbo, than in terms of your work already being ‘out there’.
I’d like to add a couple more comments. Does submitting a trip to Trazzler prevent you from using the material elsewhere? Sure, you have lost the first rights to that exact text, but how many other places are crying out for 150 word travel snapshots anyway? Extend your snapshot in to an 800 word feature, change the wording, and–I may be wrong–you have a new piece, don’t you?
There is also the issue of exposure. While I agree that writers should not ply their craft for free, perhaps it is sometimes smart to do so, especially when first starting out, and/or as part of a longer term plan. Sites such as Trazzler (and Matador) allow writers to reach a much wider audience than they might otherwise. (A difference, of course, is that Matador pay for everything they publish.)
People write, and contribute to publications, for very different reasons. There are plenty of publishing fish in the sea for us to sample. As you so elegantly put it, “if you don’t like it, find somewhere else to play.” I fully agree.
Best wishes, Nick.
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What’s everyone’s opinion on entry fees to travel contests?
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I haven’t paid for a contest, and I probably wouldn’t unless I also got something out of it, like feedback or a critique of some sort. I also have entered a lot of contests, though, so I’m not a great judge of what would be considered a “reasonable” fee. I am going to check out the contests in this article though.
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hey turner,
i’ve paid to enter contests before but only if they were magazines i really wanted to support. i looked / look at it that way; if it’s a magazine / organization that seems to really need the financial support, then cool–if i don’t win then it’s kind of a donation.
that being said, there are all kinds of magazines out there that just seem like they run off of collecting hundreds (or thousands) of suckers’ entry fees.
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Paying fees for writing contests is probably no different than photo contests; there’s the Pros and Cons. If it isn’t some real professional outfit you’re givin’ yer coins to, it’s more than likely a CON !
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Hi Sarah –
I run Trazzler so I wanted respond to you directly. Editorial/creative people run this company. We do everything we can to make Trazzler a great place for writers. So far, more than 30% of our budget has been used to pay freelance writers and editors. (By comparison, the New York Times pays out about 15%.) We will continue to pay at this rate as we grow.
Here is a list of the writers/editors we have hired so far: http://www.trazzler.com/about/team. We have more to add to the list… in total, about 75 writers and editors. The amount per freelance contract falls in a range of $250 – $7,500. More for full-time employees.
Our system rewards the best contributors with real freelance writing contracts and jobs that pay a professional rate. We could hire more writers for less money–as so many sites do–but we decided early on that we wanted to dedicate a high percentage of our budget to hiring those writers who embrace the idea of Trazzler and have a one-of-a-kind contribution to make (see #1). We have a long, long list of writers we will hire in the near future. Like any publication, it can take us several months to assign a contract.
We are one of the few Internet companies that values and pays for editorial at the rate we do. I wake up every morning thinking I’m going to work on something that will emerge as a new model for writing, and will be a home for many professional writers and creative people. So it’s bewildering to come across a comment like yours.
You wrote that we keep “dangling the promise of a contract out there.” What do you mean by that? We can address a genuine concern but you’ll have to be more specific. These are the places where we discuss jobs related to editorial.
http://blog.trazzler.com/
http://www.trazzler.com/about/contest
http://www.trazzler.com/about/jobsThanks,
Adam↵ -
This is an awesome list of travel writing contests that we were unaware of. Thanks for the details and links for each. We will surely pass this info on to others and look forward to any follow up articles involving the “winners” articles.
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This is one of the best threads I’ve read in weeks. Keep the comments coming!
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