Author Interview with Tara and Mike at Two Travelaholics

Author Interview with Tara and Mike from Two Travelaholics

This week we’re joined by round the world travelers Tara and Mike from Two Travelaholics. When they were planning their memorable RTW trip they pulled together information from multiple sources and realized there was a gap in the marketplace and proceeded to write a how-to resource guide for travelers who were planning a similar trip.

This approach is how I started my Travel Guide series. I needed information about the Bodrum, and spent hours in search of the relevant advice and travel tips. I felt there was a gap in the marketplace and I wrote a travel guide to plug the gap.

Is there a better reason to write a book? Probably not. So if you have a passion for a topic and can’t find the information you need about it, why not write your own travel guide or travel how to book like, me, Mike and Tara, and many other travel bloggers have done? Let’s find out more about Tara and Mike’s writing and self-publishing journey.

Author Interview: Tara and Mike from Two Travelholics

How would you describe the type of books/genre you write?

Our book, Create Your Escape: A Practical Guide for Planning Long-Term Travel, is nonfiction, as is the writing we do on our blog, Two Travelaholics. Our goal is to educate and inform through the lense of our personal experiences. When we wrote Create Your Escape, we wanted to create a practical handbook filled with steps on how others could pursue long-term travel. It’s a reflection of our own preparation for a 14-month around-the-world we completed from 2012-2013. We wanted to eschew the typical memoir-type book that some travelers write.

In the book, we dive into the items that made our pre-trip planning successful and also acknowledge our failures or shortcomings and provide recommendations about what we would have done differently. It addresses everything from choosing the best credit cards, health and travel insurance to learning what visas, immunizations, and important legal documents you may need to complete.

What motivated you to start writing?

Writing has been a passion of both of ours for years, but it wasn’t until our trip that we became focused on habitually contributing to our travel blog and eventually spinning off our advice into a book. Honestly, the freedom to write anywhere in the world is very empowering, too.

The Icefields Parkway(Banff & Jasper National Park). — Tara at The Icefields Parkway (Banff & Jasper National Park).

Tell us the journey you went on to get your books published (e.g. direct on your website, self-published, assisted-publishing, traditional publisher)

Once the pleasure of writing the book concluded, the pain of trying to get it published began. There was a mixture of naiveté and hopeful optimism that kept us going. First, we developed a basic pitch that we tailored to individual literary agents who expressed interest in representing travel writers. We sent pitches to more than 50 agents with a goal of sending 3-5 per day a few times each week. We probably let this process run a longer than we should have. Most agents have a “don’t contact us, we’ll contact you“ policy and request anywhere from 6-8 weeks to respond. So we found ourselves in a holding period just waiting and pitching and waiting.

We heard back from a couple agents who seemed interested, but we ultimately got the sense that they weren’t going to move forward. We were exhausted from the process and anxious to release our book, so we decided to move forward with self-publishing. A professional editor friend of ours generously volunteered to edit the manuscript. Tara completed the layout for both our ebook and paperback. She was already well-versed in InDesign and had experience with print layout and design from a previous job, which made it an easy – and fun – task for her. Then she read up on the ins and outs of formatting an ebook in Word and completed that for us too. We hired an artist friend to design the book jacket.

Then we moved forward with publishing the book to Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) for the ebook and to CreateSpace (an Amazon partner) for the paperback. We opted into KDP Select, which offers self-publishers a few perks if agree to an exclusive selling agreement with Amazon. That kept our ebook off other websites, like Barnes & Noble, iBooks (Apple’s ebookstore), Google Play, OverDrive, et al., until we were ready to expand. When we were ready a few months later, we published through Smashwords for expanded distribution for the previously mentioned sites among many others.

Rocky Mountain National Park Mike and Tara Two Travelaholics — Mike and Tara at Rocky Mountain National Park

What publishing elements do you most enjoy and most like to avoid, and why? (e.g. design, marketing, formatting etc.)

As is the case with most artists, the creative process (i.e.: writing) is what we enjoyed most. The business side made the process more of a job and sucked some of the fun out of. Which is not to say that we didn’t find some fulfillment in it, but the transformation from author to salesperson can be draining.

Mike and Tara The Discovery space shuttle — Mike and Tara at The Discovery space shuttle

With the hindsight of being a published author, anything you would have done differently?

Our advice would be to flesh out your end goal before you put pen to paper. If we started pitching our book before we got too far into writing, we could have altered its content if a lit agent had wanted us to. Since we had a completed book in hand by the time we started pitching to agents, we were already personally tied to its content. Any major editing requests would have required a complete rewrite of chapters or the direction of the book, which interested neither of us.

However, this meant we were wholly responsible for the book’s content and final form. There is definitely pride in knowing we didn’t compromise our writing style in order to get a book published that we are proud of.

Mike at Jasper National Park Tara Two Travelaholics — Mike at Jasper National Park making new friends

What tips or advice would you give an aspiring indie author who is looking to self-publish?

You don’t, and shouldn’t, have to do it all. Set aside a budget for external help and consider finding an artist to design your cover, a layout designer to create the electronic and physical copies of your book, and even hiring a marketing or PR team. If you elect to wear all the hats, you will burn yourself out.

Luckily, we work well as a team, dividing and conquering tasks by assigning them based on our own strengths and interests. In hindsight, there were definitely tasks that we should have hired someone more experienced to execute. But now we have the unique perspective of having done it all ourselves, which gives us firsthand experience should we decide to write a book on self-publishing!

What marketing or promotional tools or techniques do you use to reach your readers?

The choice to initially roll our book our through Amazon KDP Select was a difficult one. This required exclusivity, and after researching various distributors like Smashwords, Amazon’s market share and footprint just seemed too big to ignore. For the first several months, we only listed with KDP Select, and then published through Smashwords.

Using Smashwords as a distributor makes it easier for libraries and other niche markets to purchase our book. Eventually, we saw that sales through ancillary markets were a trickle compared to the reliable stream that we received from Amazon, so we went back to KDP Select.

In order to raise awareness of the book, we have completed interviews (online and on the radio), published ads on Facebook and on Amazon (the latter we have running continuously), run the occasional sale, and will participate in book signings/talks. Admittedly, PR is where we fell short and would hire out for our next book if we self-publish again. It was somewhat exhausting to even think about after all the other work we had done to bring the book to completion.

Tara at a book signing event for Create your Escape.

What impact do you want your books to have on your readers?

If someone picks up our book and responsibly prepares for their own around-the-world trip, we could not be more happy. There was no comprehensive reference guide for us when we were preparing for our trip – we were flying by the seat of pants, cobbling together advice from books, blogs and forums. There is more information today, but it is still somewhat scattered, hence our motivation to assemble it all in our book.

What is your latest book about?

We’re looking at putting together a book of useful travel hacks that applies to all travelers, regardless of whether they are taking a weekend vacation or a year-long trip. This would also help introduce our writing to a broader audience since quitting your job to travel the world, it turns out, is not a passion everyone holds.

What’s next on your writing journey?

We continue to do freelance writing for a few established clients, and we want to do a better job of publishing to our blog this year. We also plan to get more focused on writing our next book. We never turn down an opportunity to write, but we take each day as it comes.

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Author Bio

Tara and Mike Shubbuck are authors, photographers and travel experts. They run the Two Travelaholics website. In 2012, Tara and Mike sold their possessions, quit their jobs, and traveled around the world for 14 months on their “extended honeymoon.” They are always in search of the tastiest food, chubbiest pugs, and unforgettable scenery and experiences.