An Interview with Michael Buckley

Michael Buckley’s name has become synonymous with covering the unique beauty of Tibet’s landscape and culture, but he has also rappelled through the treetops of Costa Rica, hunted wildlife in Bhutan (with a camera), mountain-biked the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan, dived with manta rays in Borneo, and kayaked in Cambodia. In recent years, he has turned his attention to making short documentaries about Tibet (see www.WildYakFilms.com). He is the author/co-author of ten books, including Eccentric Explorers, Shangri-La: a Guide to the Himalayan Dream, and Tibet: the Bradt Travel Guide. Check out his website here!

You’ve been the author of many guidebooks. Many people assume this is a fun, glamorous job, which I’m sure you will dispute. Can you still make money writing guidebooks and manage to actually enjoy the travel/research part as well?

It’s hard to make money from writing guidebooks, because of on-the-road expenses. Does the publisher cover on-the-road expenses plus a fee for writing and research? Usually not. Will royalties cover that? Probably not. So it’s more a case of trying to break even. The real value of writing guidebooks, for me, is that the project motivates you to do extensive research. And this valuable  research can be drawn on for writing magazine stories. I have generated more income from a single magazine story about Bhutan (it sold a number of times) than I ever did for an entire guidebook about Himalayan regions. But I would not have clued into that story unless I had done the book research.  The guidebook establishes you as an expert in the field. It is like a large calling card. While the travel part of guidebook writing is fun, sitting down afterwards to deal with a mountain of data is stressful. Especially when you need to get it finished on a deadline.

How did you "break in to travel writing"? What have been the keys to your success?

Timing: being in the right place at the right time with the right story. Having a fresh perspective on things. Contacts, contacts, contacts. Contacts are extremely important.

Where do you see your career as a travel writer being three years from now? How will your income mix change and what are you doing to adapt to the changing media landscape?

The future of travel writing does not look bright--have to branch out into other media to make it work, such as web-based materials or e-books. The net is both blessing and curse. It’s hard to make money online, but in publishing terms, it makes things much easier. Getting a book published in print form is a lengthy process--it  can take 8 months or more, and that’s after acceptance by a publisher.  But you can publish an small (or large) ebook yourself under a free platform like Smashwords within a few days, and it could be available around the planet as a digital download for an iPad within a few weeks.

Knowing what you do now, if you were starting from scratch today to become established as a travel writer, what steps would you take to ensure success?

Digital advances in recent years have completely changed the way writing and photography are marketed, with so much digital content coming out. Success is going to be very slippery in this context. At the heart of good travel writing is telling a terrific story. If you can add other media skills like photography and video to complement that, all the better.  Travel writing needs visuals.  I would say persistence is the key to becoming an established travel writer. And a thick skin. And I think it’s good to have some online presence, such as your own website with sample stories, and perhaps embedded YouTube clips and so on.

What advice would you give to someone near and dear to you who wanted to become a travel writer---assuming they had zero credits to their name. (Besides "Don't do it"?)

Don't write for money. Write because you are addicted to travel anyway (like me!). Travel writing gives you a purpose and a focus, enabling you to delve deeper into the culture. Cultivate online publishing as a way of getting content posted. But make sure you hang onto the copyright.

How has being a specialist in a certain part of the world—Tibet--helped your career and the opportunities that have come your way?

The value of specialisation is building up a research base. The writing is only as good as the research: by focusing on a particular region, you build up a big research database. Research is time-consuming. It can take several years to build the personal database. Then you can spin that expertise off into other areas. For example, Tibetan culture covers a broad swathe of the Himalayas—Bhutan, Ladakh, parts of Nepal, parts of northern India. This has certainly helped with opportunities for magazine work and so on. But I also do a lot of scouting for new material in diverse parts of the world.  I have written about wildlife in Borneo, and diving in Palau. Travel writing allows you the latitude to delve into many other fields—from food to archeology.  A writer should be able to tackle any subject as long as the passion is there—and the research backing is there. As a travel writer, I tend to go for regions where there is little competition from other writers.

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Michael Buckley is a freelance travel writer, photographer and filmmaker based in Vancouver, Canada. He has traveled extensively in the Himalayas and Southeast Asia, and trekked and mountain-biked in the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges. He is author or co-author of ten books about Asian and Himalayan travel, including Eccentric Explorers, a biography-based book about ten wacky adventurers to the Tibetan plateau; Shangri-La: A Travel Guide to the Himalayan Dream—a concept guidebook; Tibet: the Bradt Travel Guide, and a travel narrative, Travels in the Tibetan World. In the past, he has authored guidebooks to regions of Southeast Asia, such as a comprehensive guidebook to  Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Buckley's feature stories have appeared in dozens of magazines, newspapers and other sources (including Perceptive Travel). He is winner of an Indie Excellence Book Award (2009) and a Lowell Thomas Book Award (2003).

Interview conducted in October, 2011 by Travel Writing 2.0 author Tim Leffel and edited by Kristin Mock.

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