Revenue share the way forward for travel writers?

Thanks to Abha's recent post at WrittenRoad.com I found a great interview with Tim Leffel on BraveNewTraveler.com. The interview has great observations from Tim, as Editor of PerceptiveTravel.com, on what the future of travel writing holds for writers and publishers.

As I've recently started writing for a revenue-share travel website, SoMuchWorld.com, it was interesting to read what Tim thought. "I’d rather pay a percentage of modest revenue than to resort to the reworked press releases you already see all over the travel media," he commented.

I wonder how many other Internet travel guides will revert to this model - and whether some can afford to?

The potential of an income stream from online ads around a collection of articles could well be a better proposal for a writer than a one-off fee of $50, or perhaps even $500, even if 30 percent of that goes to the publisher. (SoMuchWorld.com pays up to 70 percent of article-specific ad revenue to the writer.) Even, as Tim suggested, a percentage of website revenue has to be better than some of the stunningly low payments being offered online.

Perceptive Travel.com's content is refreshingly niche with a wide variety of styles. However, I found the overall experience a bit lacking, bland even. Don't get me wrong, I don't want images and buttons splattered across my screen just for the sake of them, but the "you're the 1 zilliionth person to be annoyed by this flashing ad" distractions were unwelcome and, I felt, lowered the expectation of quality content.

The archives contained some real gems - my personal favourite being Shari Caudron's tale of getting naked in front of a man in an Islamic country, "When in Jordan". Definitely worth a read.

If you want to write for PerceptiveTravel.com you will need to be a published book author - read my lips - only articles from authors with book(s) in print will be accepted. I figured that since they had this in bold on their website, I ought to follow suit.

If you're a published book author you can check out writers' guidelines here.