May 2010 BATW “Pictures on the Run” Presentation Notes

Presenters: Robert Holmes, David Sanger and Glenn Steiner; organized by Morton Beebe

Robert Holmes has been a professional travel photographer for 35 years and laments the fact that his profession has begun to fade away.  The main focus of his work in recent years has been the production of books.  He has collaborated on 47 books including his most recent, Passion for Pinot, focusing on wineries producing Pinot Noir in Oregon and California.  His current photographic pursuits fit right in with Bob’s love of wine and cooking.

A good part of his international travel today involves teaching photographic workshops abroad rather than being sent on assignment by publishers, and his slideshow included shots taken during a workshop he taught in Burma earlier this year.  His other work as a professional photographer is being done closer to home, making life easier for him as a single father of two teenage girls.

Bob said that the proliferation of photographs available on the Internet has reduced sales of his stock photos substantially during the last three years.  However, he pointed out that Apple’s newly released iPad is creating an emerging market for photographic content and that the iPad application Beautiful Planet is a good example of this trend.

In Bob’s opinion, the best time of day to shoot photos is dawn when the light is beautiful, even more so than at sunset.  More importantly, those pesky tourists who might walk into your shot at the end of the day are usually still in bed in the early hours of the morning!   Bob suggests getting up before daybreak and beginning to shoot as the morning light evolves.

Unlike many professional photographers, Bob rarely uses a tripod unless the light level is so low that shooting with his camera hand-held is impossible.  When shooting photographs of people, Bob likes to “personalize down” his subjects, often shooting them in silhouette or from behind.

David Sanger has been a professional travel photographer for 19 years.  He feels it is difficult for one to be both photographer and writer and do both tasks well.  His photos illustrate the book San Francisco Bay: Portrait of an Estuary.

David likes to do photo essays with minimum captions. His slideshow presentation included several stories accompanied by his photographs.  He likes to have one main image that will tell the whole story and be the “photographic nut graf.”

He usually researches the location ahead of time and works from a shot list of images he needs for the story.  However, he prefers not to work with the text of the story in-hand when he is in the field.  David often shoots 6,000 images a week and submits about 400 to the editor.

Although he has shot many photos on assignment, today he primarily works as a stock photographer.  However, like Robert Holmes, he has found that on-line photo image sites such as Getty Images have decreased his own stock photo sales.

Glenn Steiner has been a professional photographer for 34 years often working with advertising agencies and directly with advertisers.  He spends two to three months a year in Greece shooting photos and teaching photo workshops.  He also teaches at universities.

Since Glenn was getting ready to depart for Greece in four days, he brought along the equipment that he typically carries on a trip.  This includes a Sony VAIO F690 light-weight laptop (about 3 pounds, costs $2,500 to $3,000; note that this model is no longer available), a Nikon D700 DSLR and three or four lenses for it.  A Canon G10 or G11 serves as his backup camera.  Glenn thinks amateurs can get great shots with today’s digital cameras.

He is fascinated by the light in Greece and likes to shoot people when he is on location there.  He said you can secretly take photos of people from a distance, but you need a long lens to do so.

He says if you get a great idea for a shot, keep going back to find it.  He likes to include interesting foregrounds and backgrounds in his shots.

Glenn usually shoots 20 to 30 variations of the same scene to give editors great flexibility in choosing the right image for the project in question.  (Marc Longwood said that we need to be aware of editor’s needs and shoot both vertical and horizontal shots of a scene to make it easier for the editor to chose the one that will best fit the photos into the page layout along with the text).

Like Robert and David, Glenn shoots images in RAW because you can get more color and tone variation.  Although some professional photographers like to use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for photo editing, Glenn prefers Adobe’s original Photoshop program.

–        Dick Jordan and Sandy Sims, BATW Program Chair

Candy Harrington on
Finding a Niche, Building a Platform and Marketing

Candy Harrington (photos © John Montgomery)

BATW members have been telling me they found Candy Harrington’s presentation on March 20 excellent. Her talk was all about finding a niche, building a platform and marketing, something she has done so successfully that editors call her for stories. Candy’s niche is travel for slow walkers and wheelers. She says she had been writing general travel stories for 15 years and was getting somewhat bored with that. So she started volunteering for some nonprofit organizations. Someone at one of these agencies suggested she start writing about accessible travel. Now, some 15 years later, Candy’s expertise in accessible travel has come into a time when baby boomers will need this information. Candy does not take credit for thinking ahead about the baby boomers. It’s just happened that way. But she did think about and work on her branding, her platform and her marketing, and this is what has brought her success.

Here is a summary (sorry for all I left out) of what Candy suggests for us:

(Note: You can go to Candy’s website www.CandyHarrington.com/BATW for a list of links to her information and to helpful websites. Use the link online or print out the list.)

Finding a niche:

Become an expert on something. Candy says she didn’t know anything about wheel chairs or accessible travel but found the subject fascinating. So she did the research. She says find something you are passionate about or love to write about. It should not be too big a subject or too small. The general topic “accessible travel for all disabilities” turned out to be too big so she narrowed it to slow walkers and wheelers. She says, if you say you are an expert, people believe you, so you need to back that up with research. You will have to answer lots of questions about the subject.

There are all types of expertise — for example: destinations, writing styles (humor, etc.), unique voice or a combination of things.

Branding:

The idea is to be known for something. Then have a topic, a logo, a style, a slogan. She says the corporate world does this well, and suggested McDonald’s is a great example. When children see the golden arches they want their happy meal. Some of our members are already known for expertise.

Part of branding is coming up with things that will represent you and help people remember what you do, even engage your readers. For example Candy had a bio photo of herself on her website that included Agnes the chicken. Both Candy and the chicken had bright read hair. This was not a planned thing, but it turned out Agnes became a character that received fan mail. Agnes died so Candy is going to get another “red-haired” chicken.

Candy Harrington

She also has a stuffed bear, Cherry, who is in a wheelchair. Cherry has a space on Candy’s blog. Turns out this is a great gimmick for talking to children about inclusion of people with handicaps. She pointed out, too, that our seeing Cherry and the wheelchair pretty much cemented in our minds what Candy does.

Your platform is your fan base, and people are attracted to you because of what you do (write about). Publishers today want a ready audience, and this is what you build by networking. She says you should tell everyone what you do.

Branding and platform tools:

1. Elevator pitch – This should be about 8 seconds long. She tells it to everyone she meets. “I’m Candy Harrington. I do accessible travel for slow walkers and wheelchair travelers.”
2. Website – It all starts with good editorial design. Do it yourself or get professional support. She’s fortunate that her husband, Charles, is a website expert. You need to figure out what you want the website to do (sell books, brand, etc.). If the material doesn’t fit the purpose of the site, it goes. Make an outline of what you want. Goal of Candy’s website is to build her brand; it links to her book sites, her blog, lists her speaking engagements, Twitter, her press page. You can use www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com to set up your website.
3. Blogging – Great marketing tool. A blog is a journal, informal writing that interacts with readers. It sends traffic to Candy’s book sites and her website. Her readers’ responses help her sort out ideas for future writing. It also brings editors to her site and assignments. It builds her voice. She uses keywords in her blogs that will trigger search engines. Link the blog to professional websites. A blog is good for getting comments on topics. Newsy blogs get more traffic — that would be a blog entry that relates your subject to some current news topic. Enabling RSS feed, imports your blog to other sites. You can keep your whole story private by doing a quick lead that links to the rest of the story. She does this through Linked in, Facebook and Amazon connect. It’s good to network with other bloggers. Comment on other blogs, but know that your comments need to be “giving back” comments. This shouldn’t be all about you. Candy says to use blog tagline on articles. This is non-threatening to magazines, but gets people to your blog. Some interviews are done on blogs. You can even do guest blogs on related topics and link back to your blog. She’s done a virtual book tour on blogs. And Candy says blog content needs to be premium content.
4. Google Alerts – If you go to Google alerts, you can put in any subject (including your name), and when it shows up on the Internet, you will get an email from Google notifying you. You can put subjects like your niche, book title, article title, etc., in Google alert. You can go out on the Internet and comment on the places where these are showing up. This is also a great research tool on your subject or anything you might be working on.
5. Social Networking – Candy describes this as online mingling. She says it doesn’t take long if you keep at it everyday. Candy gets up, has her coffee, checks email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Sometimes she retweets on Twitter, etc.

LinkedIn – This has a more business focus. You can ask a LinkedIn member for an introduction if you want one. She has connected with old colleagues. You can offer resources and ask questions.

Facebook – This is a mix of personal and professional.

She likes it because it’s personal, has readers, and you can request help with something you are writing. It gives you a personal face and puts writers and editors in touch with each other. There are Google indexes on Facebook. You can import your blog. She says to note if you are the only one pasting on your wall, you are doing something wrong. There should be interaction.

Twitter – This is business and private. You do micro blogging, which is usually a small statement that links to some bigger statement, story or the like. You can follow anyone. You don’t need permission. You want to be listed and can create a list, for example, maybe you start a list for vintage aircraft or some other interest of yours. This will get you more followers. You tweet on the subject and sometimes get retweeted to others and get more followers. But it’s important to be contributing and not writing just for yourself. Once you have followers, occasionally you can use this list for self-promotion. Successful tweeters are retweeting, listing and getting new followers. Tweet tools are Tweet Deck (to organize tweets), Twellow (yellow pages in which you type in a topic to find out if there are followers on that topic). Look for sources and interviews. You might find PR people who represent the place you are writing about as well as other resources. You might even announce a contest on your website.

Traditional branding

Print collateral materials, business cards, book cards, blog cards, handouts, anything about yourself and your topic that you can hand out.

Learn to work with the media – do interviews. Candy has a pressroom on her website that is helpful to media. It should include things that you can do to help a journalist. Put a link to your press room at the bottom of your website because that’s where reporters look for it. There’s a website called HARO (Help a Reporter Out ). Look in the travel section and see if there’s a reporter’s request. You can do radio interviews from home (in your robe no less). Candy offers a website for learning how to work with media. She has gotten print jobs from editors because of radio interviews.

Candy’s six tips for working with radio
1. Know your subject.
2. Tell the host “that’s a good question.”
3. Use the hosts name.
4. Be succinct.
5. Don’t use jargon language or acronyms.
6. Never give the answer: “It’s in my book; buy it.

Write industry tip sheets – this strengthens your expertise. It’s freely distributed and gets media outlets. Example: 12 tips for finding lodging accessible to wheelchairs. Write for ezines with a byline and tag line. Keep them to 500 words use bullets and subheadings.

Event driven press releases – find significant anniversaries for your subject

Become a sought-after speaker – at bookstores, libraries, assisted living housing. Candy makes money as a speaker. She charges. She says to take collateral material with you. And if you have trouble with public speaking, join Toastmasters and practice, practice, practice.

You can have an ask the expert section on your website in the expert section of your website. Always be approachable. If you don’t have the answer, point them in the right direction.

Why bother with all this?
The market place is changing. Her first book was released two days after 9/11, so she went to Print-on-Demand and sold lots of books because of her branding and marketing. She had readers who wanted her product. Publishers came to her wanting to publish her 2nd edition. She is now a consultant and makes money that way. Even CVBs (convention and visitors bureaus) refer editors to her.

– Sandy Sims
BATW Program Chair

a lively trade show at the BATW associates meeting at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in October, 2009 (photos by Yuri Krasov)

“Evolve to Survive: Notes on BATW meeting October 17, 2009″

The BATW monthly meeting “Diversification in Changing Economic Times” attracted a large number of participants to the Westin St. Francis Hotel on Union Square in San Francisco.  About 65 travel writers came to meet with a group of BATW associate members to discuss new ways of collaborating and to discover industry perspectives.

The “Thinking Outside the Box” part of the meeting started with the associates’ introductions and presentations about their clients and their areas of coverage.

1. Molly Blaisdell, President of Hook, Line & Thinker – Palau Visitor’s Authority; Pan Pacific Hotels & Resorts, and Hyatt Regency SF and Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf
2. Stephanie Fermin – San Mateo County/Silicon Valley CVB, also Palo Alto and Stanford
3. Dan Marengo, Communications Manager – Berkeley CVB and Film Office
4. Sue Price and Kerrie Walters – South Oregon and Grant’s Pass Visitors and Convention Bureau
5. Chris Chandler, Executive Director – Livermore Valley Winegrowers Association
6. Linda Parker, Founder of Alta Communications – Wine growers of Monterey, Santa Barbara, and SLO
7. Ronele Klingensmith, President, and Kristen Power of RKPR - Reno, Nevada
8. Lucy Steffens, Director of Travel Media – Sacramento CVB
9. Hillary Angel, Public Relations Manager – Palm Springs Bureau of Tourism
10. Brinn Wellise, Founder of Switchback PR + Marketing – Reno-Sparks, Lake Tahoe, Truckee
11. Ronee Nassi, Executive Director of Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce – Los Gatos.

Grant's Pass/Rogue River, Oregon, PR crew

Associates’ presentations were followed by a lively trade show, networking, and planning of future stories. Associate members dispersed press kits and souvenirs relevant to their respective destinations.

Ginny Prior and Maxine Cass moderated a luncheon panel discussion featuring associates Molly Blaisdell and Brinn Wellise, writers Lisa Alpine and Laurie McAndish King, and photographer Lee Foster.

Molly emphasized some new phenomena in the industry, saying that in the past PR organizations were not considered a revenue-generating source, but now that is changing. She spoke about the importance of writers’ feedback after press trips to various destinations. Stories, published in a timely manner and announced through the social networking media outlets, are being disseminated farther by the PR officers to create a wider promotional field for the clients. She said blog entries on writers’ websites and on public blogs such as Examiner.com are fodder for promoting her clients.

Her words about the promotional abilities of social networking were echoed by Laurie, who used You Tube to promote a book, and by Lisa, who used Twitter to sell another book in massive amounts even before it was offered to a distributor.

Brinn spoke about new venues of collaboration between writers and PR, saying that editors sometimes ask PR representatives what writer they would suggest for coverage of a particular topic. She also said that PR might give assignments to writers since their own schedule is getting busier with each new client.

As in a number of previous meetings, the perpetually discussed Examiner.com was mentioned more than once in the discussion. Foster spoke against it, saying that the pay is very low, authors lose republishing rights, and Google searches are directed to Examiner.com instead of an individual author’s website. He wants to keep away from that controversial website with user-generated content. Laurie added that unless a writer sells something from his or her website, it does not make much sense to use Examiner.com primarily to drive traffic to his/her website.

Other topics were raised by the audience members.  They asked about which software is better for creating a website or a blog and how all social networking media outlets are tied together so posting on one of them automatically generates content on others.

An important topic of the new FTC guidelines for disclosure of endorsements was raised by an audience member but re-addressed to the BATW online forum by the moderators due to the lack of time.

Beet salad at the BATW luncheon

Sea bass main course at the BATW luncheon at the Westin St. Francis

The meeting was organized by a BATW member Janice Nieder and associate member Molly Blaisdell, and hosted by Gina Egelston, Marketing and Communications Manager of the Westin St. Francis. An upscale three-course lunch was served by Chef Thomas Rimpel, courtesy of the hotel.

For information about the Westin St. Francis Hotel, contact Gena Egelston.

– Emma Krasov

BATW Website Discussion Panelists Erin Van Rheenen, Laurie King & Ed Hasbrouck, introduction by BATW president Diane Le Bow.

[Many thanks to Joan Aragone for writing this summary of the September, 2009, BATW meeting, which received rave reviews from members. Information from the handouts from the speakers is below Joan's write-up.  We plan to get both audio and video clips of the speakers on the members-only section of the website next month.  -- Ed.]

Establishing a presence on the web is essential to promoting your name and your work. The process may appear intimidating, but help is available, and the results far outweigh any investment in time or money.  That was the message at the September BATW meeting from three web-savvy members who explained the whys, hows and benefits of going online.

Erin Van Rheenen, Ed Hasbrouck and Laurie McAndish King approached the web with different intentions and different levels of expertise. Relying on consultants in early stages, each experienced a learning curve and eventually took control of their sites. Today, each operates and maintains at least two sites, and each blogs.

Information from handouts by the speakers follows this article (below).

Following is information not included in the handouts:

1. Erin Van Van Rheenen’s sites are hosted by Godaddy.com, a “very inexpensive” host that provides good phone support. Traffic to her first site, www.livingabroadincostarica.com, averaged 150,000 to 300,000 in a year, with two categories receiving the most hits: Yoga and living in Costa Rica. Including fees for various designers involved in creating that site, she paid between $1,000 and $1,500.

The second site, www.missmoveabroad.com, was built on Wordpress, a free blogging software available on www.wordpress.org, if you have your own host. Otherwise use www.wordpress.com. You can choose a “theme” or template. She used “magazine basic” theme, available free.  Wordpress is a content management software, compared to Dreamweaver, an html-based software.

Recent blogging on www.examiner.com is an experiment to test how linkage will draw traffic to her other sites. Although she has made little income from the Examiner site, traffic on her Costa Rica site increased 30 percent in one month due to links with the Examiner. “It’s not about the money, it’s about the linkage,” she said.

She holds a full-time job at the San Francisco Exploratorium.

2. Because Ed Hasbrouck’s original domain, www.practicalnomad.com, was controlled by the publisher of his book to promote sales, he started his own site, www.hasbrouck.org., with the home page providing links to his other sites, articles, appearances, bio, etc. Every page provides space to sign up for his newsletter. The site provides income from ads and through book sales. Like the other panelists, he keeps a monthly history of hits, and he stressed the importance of linkage from various articles online to his site. Largest share of his income comes from monthly retainer received for the “Identity Project,” a blog for non-profit, www.papersplease.org/wp, where he posts two articles per week of 1,000 to 2,000 words and often writes shorter entries, too.

Best ads are from companies that have relation to what you are writing about.

3. Marketing consultant Laurie McAndish King, works online in her spare time. Her first site, www.TravelWritersNews.com, started in 2002 to archive and organize information for herself and friends. Now expanded using Wordpress, the site provides many services, including a newsletter, calls for submissions, event listing, book recommendations, etc. Her personal site, www.LaurieKing.com, showcases her work as a consultant. “If you have articles or a book, you need a website,” she said. King is working on www.LivingResumeBlog.com to teach others how to blog. Starting out is time consuming and research and knowledge of software alternatives is important, she said.

All speakers stressed the importance of site statistics that chart what site visitors seek. For help in finding ads, Hasbrouck recommended the use of commission brokers such as www.chitika.com, www.hostedbroker.com, www.commissionjunction.com and www.linkshare.com.  A consortium, www.travelwebowners.org, has a list serve.

August 2009 BATW Photojournalism Presentation Notes

Presenters: Carol Stevenson, Morton Beebe, John Montgomery, David Sanger

Carol Stevenson has just returned from an extended shoot in Thailand where she documented the elephant population. This project evolved into an understanding of the relationship between the elephants and their trainers, called mahouts. Mahouts live with their elephants their entire lives. Carol now plans to further document this relationship. Fresh off the plane, Carol kindly brought along her carry-on camera gear and her pelican case in which she packs her checked photography equipment.

Carry-on gear is packed in a photography backpack and weighs 15 pounds.

The checked Pelican Case weights 51 pounds, the airline’s allowable limit.

In her crry-on, Carol packs her Nikon 18-200 zoom lens, a Slik compact tripod, flash gear, and a Gary Fong diffuser for her flash gun.

She packs her 25 mega-pixel Nikon camera body in the Pelican case?

Carol uses the 2X2 rule. Copy all files twice. Once to her laptop. Again to her Epson P8000 160 GB storage device.

She carries three 16 GB and two 8 GB memory cards.

Very valuable is the Neck Storage Card Case which holds her memory cards.

Other items: Lithium Battery, iPhone..

What she actually took:

Check-in Pelican Case: Waist pack, 2 camera bodies, (1 in the carry-on) plastic, waterproof lunch bag from Safeway. She rolls the camera body in a protective cloth and then packs it in the foldaway bag

Three Lenses: 12-24, 24-70, 70-300mm.

Gitzo tripod.

Really important was the portable lighting system she took which includes a wireless battery pack which attached to portable strobes, included master and slave lighting.

She always uses a 3X3 rule. Only puts A images on her laptop.

Makes 3 copies. Puts best A images on a DVD

Carol’s elephant project can be viewed at www.elephantproject.com. Email is: carol@stevenson.images.com. Quote: “There’s a story behind every picture.”

Morton Beebe: Morton showed a video with audio that he has devoted a great deal of time to creating, “The Masai Oral Histories Project.” The project seeks to record and preserve the indigenous language of the Masai.

Morton cautions against traveling with one camera. He learned this lesson the hard way and is presently purchasing a Nikon D300 which records audio and video.

John Montgomery, Montgomery Photographic:

Sunset at temple ruins near Agrigento, Sicily (photo by John Montgomery)

John gave an example of “painting with light” where with a 30-to-45-second exposure, he passed a flashlight’s beam across the scene.

John showed a series of images taken under various weather and lighting conditions and explained various techniques to optimize the final outcome. For a carry-around camera, John uses a Canon g10. He recommends the waterproof case that Canon sells as a separate accessory for the camera. John recommends carrying insurance on your camera gear in case of loss or theft.

David Sanger: David carries 3 hard drives with him. He started photographing in the 1970s when he traveled as a hippie backpacker. For travel writers, David recommends taking your time when photographing. “You can’t just take two shots and call it a day.” He says. Take the time to show the atmosphere. In travel photography, showing people in an image is very important.

Leaf through a National Geographic magazine and you’ll see that 90% of the images include people. Try to avoid shooting in mid-day because the light is glaring at that time. David is drawn to themes when he travels. As an example, in Ireland, he found himself drawn to stone walls and sheep. This theme sensibility often leads to a series and helps him to create a themed portfolio.

Whenever possible, try to get a model release. Another theme to focus on is detail shots which magazine editors often favor. David likes to photograph hands. David advises editing your work by throwing the worst half out and then re-edit by culling out another half. This is a good discipline. Also, carry two camera bodies with separate focal length lenses.

On assignment trips, David carries 2 camera bodies, 4 or 5 lenses, a couple of flashes, a lap top, 3 drives. He dumps the day’s shoot at night and averages about 20 gigs of shots per day. Shoots RAW and jpeg.

– Lee Daley

Oceano Hotel Lobby (photos courtesy of Oceano Hotel)

The new Oceano Hotel and Spa in Half Moon Bay — just 30 minutes from San Francisco — hosted BATW’s July 18 meeting. From the windows in the lovely Monterrey room where we met, we could see the boats at Pillar Point Harbor just across the road. And just outside, the hotel was making preparations for an afternoon wedding. The San Francisco Chronicle has already voted the Oceano, which only opened in 2008, the best wedding venue in the San Francisco area. And some 80 nuptial bookings this year support that vote.

Ship at Oceano Hotel in Half Moon Bay

“It took 25 years to build this hotel,” Tony Canadas, sales and marketing director at Oceano, said. It took that long for three developers, one of which is local, to overcome the no-growth policy of the coastal commission and construct the hotel on what was an open field.

The outcome is 95 beautifully decorated rooms, all suites of varied sizes, with fireplaces, flat screen TVs, Balconies and wet bars.

The enormous skylight over its elegant lobby is only part of the hotel’s effort to have environmentally friendly, energy-saving practices. In fact, this is the only hotel in San Mateo County to be certified eco-friendly by the Bay Area Green Business Program. Almost everything, including paper products, linens and cooking oil, is recycled. The cooking oil is used for biodiesel fuel.

Adjacent to the hotel and also with a broad roof-style skylight, is Harbor Village where the 5,000 square-foot spa sits. The 18 village shops (9 already occupied) include a bookstore, gift shops, a yarn shop and more. Canadas says the developer is committed to keeping the stores mom-and-pop types, rather than large retail chains.

Deluxe room at the Ocean Hotel in Half Moon Bay

Room rates start at $179 for a standard suite — which is large and divided into a bedroom and living room areas — to $449 for a grand villa, apartment size, with two bedrooms and a full kitchen. The rates are flexible, and the hotel offers packages that include: spa treatments, golfing, helicopter tours, horseback riding, deep-sea fishing and more.

The Half Moon Bay area is filled with possibilities for free activities, including hiking, surfing, biking, even watching the famous Mavericks surfing competition when it’s on.

Oceano Hotel
280 Capistrano Road
Half Moon Bay
www.oceanohalfmoonbay.com

For story information contact Tony Canadas at (650) 726-5400. His cell is (415) 420-5040. Tell him you are a member of BATW.

– Sandy Sims
BATW Program Chair

Her foray into fiction was the subject of her talk at the July 18th BATW meeting in Half Moon Bay’s Oceano Hotel.

Antoinette told us of her journey into travel writing, which got its beginnings when she was a little girl and read the book Digging in Yucatan by Ann Axtell Moms. Years later, while lost at night in a scrubby jungle of Chichén Itzá, alone and frightened, Antoinette saw Axtell Moms’ ghost who told her not to be afraid; “You’ll be alright. There is a reason you are here.” After that experience, Antoinette fell in love with the Yucatan and the Mayan culture and, through determination and some luck, was able to finance herself as she wrote the travel guide: Yucatan: A guide to the land of Maya Mysteries (1987), one of the first two guide books about the Yucatan ruins, and that kicked off her enormous body of work.

Her novel The Sacred Well draws from the life of reporter Alma Reed, who in the 1920s learned that archeologists had taken $2 million worth of artifacts from Chichén Itzá ruins and hidden them in the Peabody Museum in Boston. It’s a story that follows the lives of two women, one of them a travel writer who goes to the Yucatan and discovers the story of Alma Reed. Antoinette says her Yucatan guidebook became the framework against which her fictional tale plays out. The result is an authenticity of place and a sureness of detail that could never have evolved without the nitty-gritty experience of compiling a guide.

Antoinette’s Advice

She says writing the Yucatan guide established her as a travel writer, and she suggests finding a niche in something we are passionate about as he subject of a guidebook.

Travel writing sets us apart from other writers, she says, and is a good way to get into fiction. “We are trained observers.” She says she used her notes from a trip across the Alps and from press trips to Turkey and Israel to add scenes in Pilot’s Wife. “The way the breeze hits your cheek or the clouds roll across the sky are the same as they might have been 2,000 years ago,” she says, the time frame of Pilot’s Wife.

Antoinette took a creative writing course at Stanford and says her instructor read part of Pilot’s Wife and was very encouraging.

Because that was her first novel, she says she had to write the entire story and a synopsis as well, and this is what a new fiction writer must do. She also wrote the complete The Sacred Well before showing it to her publisher, but hopes she can now sell future work with a few chapters and a synopsis. She says nonfiction and travel can be sold with a few chapters, but the writing must be very good.

It’s best to go through a publisher if possible (big or small), Antoinette says, because that helps with distribution and credibility. She found a small publisher who bought her Yucatan book.

A website is important today, she says. “It’s your house ad that shows your body of work.” Go to Antoinette’s website and be dazzled by how prolific she is. She says her website got her an agent (Irene Webb), and the agent sold her novels. When publishers became interested in Pilot’s Wife, Antoinette’s agent put it up for auction, and it got a lot more money. Once Antoinette was tied to Random House, however, The Sacred Well could not be auctioned.

It’s helpful, she says, to be in a writers group, and thinks four is a perfect size. Most meet every other week. She says group members should be on the same level as writers and preferably in the same boat as far as publishing.

Not many of us are on the same level as Antoinette. But then not many of us write for six hours every day. Back in her home in Mokelumne Hill, Antoinette will write a piece on Half Moon Bay and the Oceano Hotel for her column in the Sierra Lodestar, and return to work on her next novel.

– Sandy Sims
BATW Program Chair

Penny has very generously offered to let us include her presentation materials here on the BATW website here is her information (all used with permission):

• Five Web Copy Secrets to Hook Your Audience and Sell Your Books by Eric Gelb (19.3 KB)
• Red Hot Internet Marketing — Penny’s Powerpoint presentation (Red Hot Internet) [too large to post -- we're working on it, though]
• The Ultimate Twitter Resource Guide (Twitter Handbook) (708 KB)

Again, we thank Penny Sansevieri for her highly informational presentation at the BATW event and for her generosity in allowing us to post her materials.

– April Orcutt
BATW Website Editor

[OK, your website editor admits this is more computer "industry news" than travel industry news, but the Autodesk Gallery is a fun place, and who knows what impact of some of the wild inventions it features might have on travel in the future. -- ed.]

Lego Dinosaur at Autodesk Gallery (all photos by George Kenicer)

Autodesk Gallery

Autodesk Gallery is only open to the public one afternoon a month—from 1 to 5 p.m. on the first Wednesday. But it’s worth the effort to travel to One Market Street in San Francisco during that tiny window of time to see what could be billed as Star Trek come alive.

Inside the Lego Dinosaur

Autodesk Gallery, a 16,500 sq ft space on the second floor, houses some of today’s amazing technologically created designs, including a machine that prints out design prototypes—some even have moveable parts—in granite, plastic, and other materials by slowly printing it in ultra thin layers. One prototype of a fullsize motorcycle was printed out this way.

There’s a television screen that is 3D—that doesn’t require the usual 3D glasses. And there’s a television monitor that one can move parts around on with their hands.

Autodesk is a software design company, whose software AutoCAD (CAD stands for computer aided design). CAD is integral to most of modern day inventions an engineering, including everything from hollow surfboards, to cars, special effects in movies, the seismic retrofit plans for the Oakland Bay Bridge, and buildings such as the ultra modern Cathedral of Light in Oakland and the new California Academy of Sciences.

Autodesk Gallery tour at May, 2009, BATW meeting

What’s particularly exciting about the gallery is that with each exhibit there is also a display about its design process from beginning to end. For example, the exhibit of the XO Laptop—from the One Laptop per Child Foundation—illustrates the thinking, the concept design, the plastic model and the final product.

The new Autodesk Gallery is mainly used for clients—to show them what can be done with computer assisted design. Autodesk currently serves 9 million clients in 160 countries.  “Eventually,” says Jason Medal-Katz, the manager of the gallery, “we will open to the public more.”

For more information, Jason Medal-Katz can be reached at jason.medal-katz@autodesk.com

– Sandy Sims
BATW Program Chair