I think these days nobody is buying books anymore. There are so many interesding blogs available for free so you could give something back by making your own blog available for free
Offroad Motorrad Weltreisen - das letzte Abenteuer

I thought that all blogs & websites have free access to anybody who is interested. Or no?

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The Pin Project | Overland Greece

Unfortunately the world has been inundated with would be authors not only in travel books but books of all genre over the last 20 years & the world has become skeptical on the % of quality books out there. Has for travel books well they are just now becoming just a labour of love, nearly everyone who spends 6 mths or more on the road thinks they have achieved something great, well they have to themselves but to the greater audience they are just one of thousands & thousands who are doing this everyday, I think if one wants to write a book they really should ask the question "why do I want to do this" is it to make money, is it to get 5 mins of fame & or is it something I want to do for myself. If you answer yes to the 3rd question then the chances are it will appeal to a greater audience, but unless your Jk Rowling you will be working for $2 an hour if your lucky. Riding thru mud rain (what we think is isolated roads) dropped bikes, camping in the bush & the list goes on does not make a book, you need a story of emotion & very few motorbike authors have delivered, has they need to appeal to non riders as well. Just for the record my favourite motorbike book is "Running with the Moon" by Jonny Bealby

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....rather Die Living.....than Live Dying !
www.globetrekkers.net.au

Thoroughly agree with everything written in the above post. Imo, if you're going to sell your book in sufficient numbers, you need a unique selling point. You also have to spend days/weeks at events manning your book selling stand, on the off chance someone wants to buy it.

Also consider the potential animosity you could generate if your "marketing strategy" exclusively involves spamming bike travel forums and Facebook groups. Authors like Sam Manicom and Chris Scott are very aware of how to market their wares properly. Others have annoyed me so much, I refuse to buy their stuff as a matter of principle (including unfriending/ unfollowing them on FB. Unfortunately I also have to unsubscribe from FB groups that still allow people to just appear, try to flog something, then disappear again without also giving knowledge to the community. Otherwise my newsfeed would just be wall to wall identical spam).

I also agree with the sentiment that if you want to share your words, pictures and videos it'll be a lot less hassle and cheaper to just have your own website and/or write a ride report on a travel forum like this one. People can choose to visit it if they want. Just because I can write in the medium of English, doesn't make me an author. Just because I own a camera doesn't make me a photographer of any note. When the mood takes me, I like generating content. For my memories. If others like it too, all the better.

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TBS.com

I read lots of books. I read very very few blogs. The vast range of books available in the high street also rather goes against this theory.
I can't download a blog to read on a plane or on the road like I can a book and the literary quality is usually (although not always) significantly better in a book.

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1990 Landcruiser H60. Full rebuild completed 2014

I’ve always regarded blogs and websites as a kind of quick and dirty way of recording your trip, in much the same way as magazine articles. Something that skims the surface of what you spent weeks, months or years doing. As a reader, if all you’re interested in is a kind of edited highlights version they’re perfect. If you want to get across something in greater depth then the book format still has a lot to offer but of course it requires a reader to commit to something more than just flicking the pages of a magazine in W H Smiths.

For example, I did a short trip a couple of years ago and wrote it up when I returned by way of personal memoir. It came to a little over 25,000 words. I then produced a 4000 word version which I uploaded to the ride tales section here and as a result was approached by a journalist who asked if they could use it in their magazine. It would need to be cut down to 1200 words though. All that was left by the time it appeared was just the “shiny” bits, the snow covered peaks. The body of it, the parts that don’t “photograph” well, were all left on the cutting room floor.

That’s a different product to producing a book that has the space to connect ideas, to explore side alleys and to come to a conclusion. I’ve heard it said that you don’t know what you think about something till you’ve written it down and there is something to be said for that. I hardly ever end up with what I intended to write - even this post has drifted away from what I thought I was going to say. Whether anyone else wants to take that journey with you is another matter.

An Inmate over on ADVrider.com and UKGSer.com (I think?) - sums-up maintaining an on-line blog, which goes something like this:

'My blog is my personal journal and is a gift from Me, at the contemporaneous time of writing it .. to The Future Me.

When I'm sitting alone in my condominium retirement flat, with most of my neighbouring flat-owners typically staring out of their windows, waiting for God and wishfully thinking [alas, too late] 'if only' - I'll be re-reading my journals and remembering that maybe, just maybe, I did something a little special and 'off piste' when I had the chance.

Plus the old-biddy chicks in-and-around the condo .. simply won't be able to keep their hands off me! .. '

Now there's forward thinking, eh?!

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Right Way Round ...

That is your choice. The books in the highstreet have passed the professional editor's USP test. A self-publisher or blog writer doesn't need to pass this hurdle.

It is very straight forward to download any online blog: either save the webpage (still in html format) to your device's harddisk for later offline reading in a browser, or "print" it to pdf format, so you can read it on your device later (offline in any pdf viewing software, including a browser) on a plane/train/automobile. Or actually print it onto paper.


A word-limited magazine article is clearly very different to a "proper" book. However, there's really IMO no difference to someone writing a very detailed blog/ride report to a book, other than one might still (today, but not for much longer imho) be on paper. There are some blogs on the HUBB, but especially at Ride Reports - Epic Rides | Adventure Rider where there have been hundreds of thousands or even millions of clicks = "reads".

Those million-plus authors don't reach that popularity by just skimming the surface of their tale. They also don't have all the stress that someone who wants to be "published" will face, as described by the OP. And maybe in a more satisfying way, they can interact with their audience while writing their story.

PS. Having written (and am currently writing...) a Ride Report, it may be dirty, but it ain't quick in any way, shape or form. It take a long time, but as with some "proper" writers, it is a labour of love. As suggested by Keith, I can read it back to myself later, while fending off the other wrinklies in the care home who think I'm a card carrying hero, or as the son of a Colombian mate of mine described me on Facebook: "The f***ing dad of the warriors"

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TBS.com

Yes it is, and I was never disputing the value of choice so I don't understand the relevance of that statement. What I was commenting on was the stupidity of the remark that no one buys books anymore. Clearly they do, with the UK book market alone reaching in excess of £2billion. Of that around £200million is ebooks, so the majority of the market, by a long way, still belongs to traditionally printed books but the ebook market is still not insignificant.

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1990 Landcruiser H60. Full rebuild completed 2014

Yeah, I had that plan too! I'm still a bit short of the retirement flat but back in the day we did take notes and pictures with one eye on (our) posterity. The books fell by the wayside but I eventually found enough of the notes to make a start on a website:

Pisquick Tours

Sadly it's failed miserably to attract hordes of "old-biddy chicks" but I live in hope

Wow! Respect.

I can see from Pisquick Tours that you were covering quite serious 2-up moto distances across Europe back in the late 1960s and early '70s.

That was 20 years ahead of me and 'er indoors. And there was us thinking [.. duh?!] back in the day - with obvious self-delusion - that we were trail-blazing pioneers.

You should revive and elaborate upon Pisquick Tours (a fab title btw) and I reckon that throughout your golden years you'll be combing a wrinkly ol' biddy out of your long & bushy white beard every morning - bloody guaranteed!

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Right Way Round ...

An interesting take on publication challenges. Though like anything there are many ways to skin a cat. My wife, Autumn Birt (look her up) has 13 books now to her name. I have three. All have been self published. All cover art, marketing, and sweat done by us. The only outsourcing has been some stock art for the covers and a freelance editor to do the final edit after several rereads. All of our books are available via e-book and also print on demand that allows a person to "buy" hard copy and it shows up like a standard book.

In our opinion, bookstores are quaint and not really applicable to future sales which is a shame but a sign of the times. I now tend to to buy all my book on my kindle for the mobility.

Total cost from start to finish on a book is about $500 at the most and that is pushing it. That being said....it is a lot of work to learn but once the process is learned it becomes easier. The final hurdle however is marketing we would love to push a bit further into the market.]

On a side note: She did have a traditional publisher early on...but told them to take a walk. Too many games and too much $ taken out for the work put in.