How to Publish a Travel Book
Author Fran Sandham on Getting his Travel Experience Into Print
Apr 20, 2009
In 1997, Fran Sandham flew from the United Kingdom to Namibia on the west coast of Africa. Here he started walking, without assistance or back-up of any kind. By the time he reached the Indian Ocean on the east coast, he had been walking for nearly a year and covered 3,000 miles. He had also lost three-and-a-half stone.
On his return to the United Kingdom, Sandham wrote up the account of his remarkable physical feat. The result was Traversa, eventually published by Duckworth Overlook in 2007. He talks about the long and sometimes disheartening process of getting his manuscript into print.
Unusual Story Idea
The title of the book is taken from the name given to the overland expeditions across Africa undertaken by the Victorian explorers from 1850 onwards. The most famous of these explorers were Livingstone, Stanley and Grogan.
Sandham says it was his fascination with these men, combined with a longing to escape the morning commute into London, which brought him to Africa; and he had always intended to weave this historical perspective into his account of his own modern-day traversa.
Some publishers had other ideas, however. “[They] said young backpackers wouldn’t be interested, that it smacked of colonialism,” Sandham explains. “Some of the historical references were trimmed down during the editing process, but the fact is you meet exactly the same kind of situations and characters now that the explorers did then: con artists, lovable rogues and so on.”
Keeping Accurate Notes
The duration of Sandham’s walk made it important to take notes along the way, so that he would not forget important details. “I started out making pages of notes, and sending photocopies back home when I could. But at a certain point I thought, I’m going to have a wheelbarrow full of these things when I reach the other side, so I began jotting down short sentences or mnemonics during breaks instead.”
Back home, it took Sandham about a year to write up his notes into the rough outline of a story. He also got a job as an editor for Rough Guides, a travel guide publisher, and says that the discipline of improving other people’s work helped him look critically at his own.
Relentless Rejection
In the years that followed, his manuscript was “relentlessly rejected” by around 40 publishers. He had an agent at one point, thinking this might be the way forward, but after two years and no book deal they went their separate ways.
“I went through periods of great frustration with the process,” Sandham says, “but I never considered other options such as self-publishing. My attitude was, if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll write another book and publish Traversa on the back of that. In the six months before I finally started getting acceptance letters, I was as certain as ever that my book was good and should be published.”
In total, it took Sandham nine years to get a book deal. Throughout this period he showed the same kind of tenacity that had got him across Africa in the first place. He says that ultimately the long wait was worth it because he got to write the kind of book he wanted to read. “It is not conventional travel writing, but high adventure combined with travel. Readers have also said they enjoyed it because it is written with honesty and a lack of pompousness.”
Sandham currently holds regular talks about his journey and writes on a freelance basis for newspapers and travel magazines. In between all this, he is trying to find time to write his second book. More information on Traversa and an excerpt from the book can be found on the dedicated website.
 |
