eBook site visit
Introduction
An eBook site visit is an essential step in writing a successful travel eBook. As a professional project tenderer in the development world, you simply could not write a successful tender without visiting the recipients of the assistance. Such is the case with successful travel eBooks. This will no doubt be the case with other genres as well.
The need to undertake a site visit may or may not be appropriate for your eBook situation.
Preparing the eBook site visit
In preparation for our eBook site visit (holiday!) we prepare a detailed schedule/itinerary, which includes:
- full flight details (confirmed)
- accommodation bookings (confirmed)
- confirmation of all tours (we do like walking tours)
- list of possible eating places (warning Coeliac on board!)
- a list of must do and see activities (with back-up)
- a list issues/questions to be resolved
- list of planned photographs (to capture culture)
- planned free periods to follow-up from tours and general experiences
- daily activity plans (including rest periods)
- reminders to micro-blog (twitter); record daily reflections (audio); and gather flyers, tourist information, CDs, and DVDs
Undertaking the eBook site visit
As reflected in our preparation above, there are a few tips and tricks we use to ensure we remain focused on our themes and follow-up interesting aspects, ensure we are refreshed for each day’s activities; and collect data and reflect on daily activities.
To ensure we remain fresh we plan major activities every other day. For example, we find four-hour (plus) tours tiring and so we don’t plan such tours on consecutive days. Moreover, it is very useful to have a lighter day following a strenuous one. Generally, during a long tour you will find places to be revisited and discover new ideas and places to be explored. These additional activities can be done the following day, before another tour begins or the focus shifts. Quite often the guide will point out an additional place to visit, or the time to take good photographs.
Never fear, a well-paced plan will end up being hectic.
Buy our eBook – Four Days in Istanbul at:
Amazon (Kindle) for The United States, United Kingdom, and Australia.
Smashwords (EPUB). Smashwords also distributes to Oyster, Scribd, Yuzu, Blio and Inktera (formerly Page Foundry) and reaches OverDrive (world’s largest library ebook platform serving 20,000+ libraries), Baker & Taylor Axis 360, Gardners (Askews & Holts and Browns Books for Students), and Odilo (2,100 public libraries in North America, South America and Europe)
Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble (Nook), and Kobo
We enjoy the Mediterranean practice of taking daily siestas at midday or early afternoon. This ensures we remain relatively fresh and allows us to continually enjoy daily activities and early evening activities. For example, it is nice to take a morning tour, daily siesta, and an early evening meal followed by a concert. Of course, some days vary but it is best to remain fresh especially when collecting data.
When the plan is to write an eBook detailing your travel experience, it is crucial that data collection is ongoing as a part of your daily activities. For example, make sure you keep all brochures, tickets and receipts, menus, hotel and restaurant names, as well as concert venues. Purchasing DVDs is always a good idea. Plastic/Paper A4 pockets with a button clip are ideal for this. If you change your schedule, make of note of it. An A5 journal is a good resource for keeping information as well.
On previous trips, we set aside 30 minutes to record our thoughts on a voice recorder at the end of each day. It is a valuable resource but it is time-consuming to extract the info: play, rewind, find where you were on the recorder, play and makes notes, and then continually repeat! The process can become tiresome. This is where Speechnotes could be very interesting; we are going to trial this application on our trip to Athens. This technology has made significant progress in recent years – it’s almost flawless. The big advantage is being able to convert speech to text and then share this note by email and then insert into a word processor – how efficient. Looking forward to trialling it.
Conclusion
We find these site visits/holidays busy, exhilarating and exhausting! The time for reflection is minimal during the visit. All these factors, together with the possibility of not starting to write your eBook for another month, emphasise the need to collect as much data as possible to support your writing later. For example, we have another three weeks in the UK after our visit, and based on experience, it is all too easy to forget crucial nuggets of information. This is where your daily recordings, brochures, DVDs etc will become invaluable.
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