Writing for Moon Travel Guides – Acquisitions & Opportunities
What does it take to become the author of a Moon guidebook? Find out about the acquisitions process here including how to submit a proposal and any open opportunities for authors to cover specific destinations.
Note: This page is specifically for writers interested in authoring one of our print travel guides. While we appreciate those interested in writing for Moon.com, we are not accepting unsolicited travel articles, blog posts, or other web content on an independent basis.
Writing for Moon Travel Guides
What We Publish
Moon Travel Guides feature a combination of practicality and spirit, offering a traveler-to-traveler perspective perfect for planning an afternoon hike, around-the-world journey, or anything in between. Moon Travel Guides cover countries, regions, cities, getaways, outdoors, and living abroad.
Each series has a different emphasis and a different geographic coverage. At any given moment, we are looking for authors for only a handful of specific titles. The majority of our assignments involve writing a guide for Moon Handbooks, our most extensive series.
Please note that we are only looking for books that fit into our current series at this time and are not interested in the following genres: fiction, children’s books, or memoirs.
How to Get Our Attention: The Pitch
To apply for any of the available titles listed below, please send a resume, a cover letter, and up to five relevant clips to acquisitions@hbgusa.com. In the cover letter, please specify which title you are interested in and explain why you are the best person to author that guidebook. A full proposal is not required at this preliminary stage.
We will contact those applicants that we think might be a good fit for the book and ask them for a phone interview. Unfortunately, we cannot respond personally to every applicant. After the phone interviews, we will invite the best candidates to write full proposals for the project.
Please do not send general applications stating that you are qualified to write any number of books. It is rare for a writer to be considered qualified to write about more than one or two destinations, so please be specific in your cover letter about which title you are applying for and why you are the best person to write that book.
To learn more about how to get our attention, read the acquisitions editor’s article: How to Write a Moon Travel Guide.
Proposal Instructions
All potential authors must be willing to submit a full proposal in order to be considered. The proposal must include ALL of the following information.
- Introduction. Give an overview of the destination, including its personality or character. Evoke a sense of place—successful proposals should make us want to go to the destination. Please limit this description to one page.
- Author credentials. What are the reasons that you would be the best author for this book? Include applicable experience, education, and other materials previously published. Be sure to attach a copy of your resume and contact information for at least three professional references. (Much of this may be reused from your original application cover letter and resume.)
- Competition analysis. Describe all other books currently available that would be competition for your proposed book. Analyze the coverage, voice, and strategic information of each. Also discuss how your book would be different and why the market needs your book.
- Outline. Compose a detailed outline the contents of your proposed book. The outline should show the general structure of the book and how each region will be covered. The outline and other proposed content must match the requirements listed in our series guidelines.
- Regional chapter descriptions and highlights. For each regional chapter, include a brief (4–5 sentences) description of the area covered in that chapter. Also choose 5-10 highlights for that region; highlights and how to select them are described in our series guidelines.
- Sample profiles. Please provide five profiles as samples of the kind of descriptions you would include in the book: one sight profile, two restaurant profiles, and two hotel profiles.
- Marketing and promotion. Please answer the following questions regarding the marketing and promotion of the book:
- Do you have an active website? What is its URL? If it is not live yet, when will it be? Are there any sites for which you are a regular blogger or contributor?
- Are you active on social media? Share your name or handle and number of followers for each. (Include public profiles only.)
- Would you like to submit articles for publication on moon.com? We’re interested in photos, videos, journalistic and editorial pieces, timely updates, and other unique travel content to share with our online followers. If yes, tell us what you have or want to create.
- Would you commit to participating in reader-facing author programs, such as Amazon Author Central or the Goodreads Author Program?
- Have you ever been interviewed for print, radio, broadcast television, or online? Do you consider yourself an effective interviewee and comfortable with the media?
- Do you have established relationships with travel editors and/or producers online, in print, television, or radio? If yes, describe the nature of your relationship.
- Manuscript specifications. Talk about the details: estimated page count, time needed to complete the manuscript, number and types of photographs you would include in the book (and how they would be obtained), and number and types of maps you would like in the book (and will provide materials for).
- Sample photos. Submit five photos (as TIFF or JPG files), with accompanying captions, that are representative of the photos that you would take or obtain for the book.
- Map. Please provide an electronic map that outlines the geographic divisions you plan to use in the book. We find that Google Maps are a good option for conveying this information.
The Work in Brief
Moon Travel Guides range in size from 200 pages to approximately 500 pages. The destination and focus of the guide determine its size, and the author typically has 6–12 months to research and write the book. Each book must conform to its respective series guidelines (we will provide guidelines only to those candidates who are selected to write a proposal). The author is also responsible for providing photos and map materials.
Destination List
We are currently looking for authors for the following destinations and topics.
U.S. & Canada
- South Dakota’s Black Hills
- Virginia & Maryland
- Big Island of Hawai‘i
- Kaua‘i
- New Orleans
- Montréal
Latin America
- Machu Picchu
Europe
- Camino Portugues
- Switzerland
- Amsterdam, Brussels & Bruges
- Croatia & Slovenia
Asia
- Vietnam
- Thailand
- Australia
Address all correspondence to:
Please do not mail hard copy pitches or proposals to the Avalon Travel office.