Q: Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less.
A: Travel articles
Q: What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?
A: Roads and Kingdoms
Atlas Obscura
The Planet D
National Geographic
Afar
Reddit
Q: If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists?
A: Jeffrey Tayler
Paul Theroux
Bruce Northam
Shelley Seale
Q: What sets your publication apart from others that publish similar material?
A: We publish stories that nobody else does, writers find us and send us impressive, well-researched stories about places and things we've never heard of. It's a constant delight to open up our email box and see what comes through the transom. Just today, in fact, a story about visiting the boyhood home of Thomas Wolfe in Asheville NC came in, by a well-regarded author who was a William Faulkner scholar. We get such great stuff!
Q: What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?
A: Read the website, and be sure to check what has already been published about the geographic area or specific topic. We have been publishing for twenty years and so we have a lot of stories already published. Try to think of a unique way of presenting a place, to really capture what's in it for the readers, and remember it's all about them, not about your personal trip. And don't submit without great photos, these are a huge part of our whole package, the photos are as important as the text.
Q: Describe the ideal submission.
A: A place I've never heard of, a trend that I didn't recognize, with a well written long narrative and excellent photos, like that Thomas Wolfe boyhood home story. Or a feature on a place like Transnistria, or Uruguay, or Kentucky, about a place we don't know much about. Interesting festivals are also great submissions.
Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?
A: They try to submit infographics which we don't use, and press releases which are not unique so we could never use them. They don't read the stories already published to try to match them and they constantly try to get us to publish crappy sponsored posts.
Q: How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?
A: Where they live, where they have been published, what they are experts in, who else they write for, their photo is mandatory too.
Q: If you publish writing, how much of a piece do you read before making the decision to reject it?
A: I read it if we are going to use it but I can't read every submission if we are not going to use them. No, it doesn't require us to read the entire thing to know it's not right. But we read many, many many articles every day!
Q: What additional evaluations, if any, does a piece go through before it is accepted?
A: My webmaster and I review all published stories and also we send the author a preview to check before it is published. We work at least 30 days ahead.
Q: What is a day in the life of an editor like for you?
A: Not sure how to do this, imagine an editor in his co-working space opening his email and evaluating stories for GoNOMAD.
Q: How important do you feel it is for publishers to embrace modern technologies?
A: You have to be able to create a Google photo album and you have to be able to attach a word doc to your submission and include the link to view the photos, we're a website not a book publisher.
Q: How much do you edit an accepted piece prior to publication?
A: line editing, deleting stuff, but we don't go through them like crazy with a red marker. One thing I hate is when the stories are written in present tense, it's over it's no longer happening so that should be avoided. Unless you're Anthony Bourdain who nobody is any more.
Q: Do you nominate work you've published for any national or international awards?
A: yes