"Getting the commission is number one on the to-do list"
Award-nominated travel writer Ian Packham on building a successful freelance career.
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Writer’s Insight: Ian Packham
For the latest edition of Writer’s Insight, I had the pleasure of speaking to Ian Packham, a freelance travel writer specialising in Africa.
Ian has travelled across the continent for more than two years in total and has visited 40 of the continent's 54 nations. He was a finalist of the Travel Blog Post of the Year category at the British Guild of Travel Writers Members’ Excellence awards 2023 and nominated for two categories at the Inspire Global awards 2025. Recent bylines have included Fodor’s, Selamta and BBC Travel.
You can find out more about Ian on his website or by checking out @ianMpackham on both Twitter/X and Instagram.
Switching from research science to travel writing must have been quite a leap. Can you talk through the most significant challenges you faced when making that transition, and what motivated you to pursue freelance writing?
The biggest challenge in turning from medical research to travel writing was that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Though I was one of the runners up in the annual National Geographic Traveller writing competition and had a couple of pieces commissioned elsewhere (amazingly), I didn’t know how the industry worked, had never heard of events like IMM and probably made every newbie mistake going, including saying to editors ‘I’ve just been to X, do you want a story?’.
Discovering how travel writing actually worked was a slow process of lots of trial and lots of error. Getting a position at a publication would probably have helped a lot with this, but it was during the last economic doldrums so there weren’t a lot of jobs going and I couldn’t see myself getting one anyway given my career change and lack of experience—which is why I’ve been freelance from day one.
As someone who’s been freelancing since the start of your writing career, what was the biggest the learning curve when you first started out? Were there any particular resources or practices that helped you overcome the initial hurdles?
I think the toughest thing when starting out is that no one knows you exist, so you’re not getting sent press releases or invitations to events where you can go some networking and get your face known, which then limits the breadth of pitches you can make to where you’ve travelled independently.
It took me a while to realise that (for UK publications at least) getting the commission is number one on the to-do list, with the trip then taking place after. It was also pretty isolating at first since I didn’t know anyone in the industry. Getting a competitive internship at 101Holidays helped build my confidence by publishing my writing with only minor tweaks (some of it’s still up!) and showing me I wasn’t doing anything wrong when getting silence back from editors.
Balancing long periods of travel with your freelance writing commitments must be tough. How do you manage your time while you're on the road, and how do you keep on top of all your writing and travel commitments?
Balance is definitely the right word. I’m naturally quite an organized person, which probably helps. I travel with LOTS of lists of things I need to remember to do and also have a day-to-day diary of what has to be got done that day either on paper or my laptop—generally both! There tends to be a couple of hours a day when I can get some writing done, e.g. between getting up and when attractions start to open. Days can be long.
I was in Ghana in 2024 for 11 weeks researching the latest edition of the Bradt guide (published December 2025) and keeping up with everything else going on in my email inbox at the same time, which included several deadlines for other publications. But the fact is I can’t afford to do it any other way. I make all my income through travel writing one way or another.
A lot of newer freelancers wonder how to approach pitching. What would you say are the most critical things to keep in mind when pitching travel articles or features? How do you tailor your pitches to suit the publications you're targeting?
The brilliant thing about travel writing is you don’t need any particular qualifications (I’m very well qualified, but in biology, and have no journalistic qualifications beyond a GCSE in English literature). Editors want good stories, and so long as you can prove your writing is up to scratch—a blog, Substack, or Medium post is fine. It doesn’t seem to matter if you’ve had bylines in top publications.
So be confident in your own ability, don’t apologise for a lack of experience, and deliver story-driven pitches to the right editors. By this I mean there’s no point pitching a long haul story to a publication like the Guardian that doesn’t take them—this is where knowing your area of speciality and doing your research comes in. It’s also important to check the publication hasn’t just covered the theme or destination, they’re unlikely to cover it again so soon.
What tips would you give to freelancers just starting out, specifically those looking to break into travel writing? What’s something you wish you knew when you began?
Networking is unbelievably important—and I say this as someone who avoided all networking events for years and lives outside of London—where most networking takes place. I’ve found I’m much more likely to get a commission or place on a press trip if the person in question has met me and maybe had a drink with me. Plus, they will almost certainly introduce you to someone else you’ve not met before.
People now often say to me ‘oh you’re the Africa guy I follow on social media’ which is great, because they might not know my name, but they know exactly what I do. Over the last year, I’ve had three or four commissions come out of chatting with someone over a free glass of wine—a double win in my book.
Many freelance writers want to get paid fairly. You’ve had bylines in well-known outlets like BBC Travel and The Independent. How do you navigate pay discussions in your freelance career and what do you see as fair rates?
Perhaps wrongly, I’ve never negotiated the rates offered by a publication. Clearly I want to be paid as much as possible, so always target the best paying publications first. Fairness in pay is then a bit subjective, depending on how much I want to do the trip, write the piece and get a byline in the publication, plus how healthy/unhealthy my bank account is looking at the time.
The bigger issue for me is invoicing. Expecting money to hit my account when it then doesn’t (because ‘the accounts team are on holiday’ or some such) can cause me real financial difficulties. I have no say on when I get paid. It could be on submission, on publication, or (more often than not) at some random time after publication chosen by the publication.
You've been nominated for prestigious awards, which speaks volumes about your work. What role have these awards played in your freelance career, both in terms of credibility and attracting new opportunities?
Honestly? I don’t think they’ve had any bearing on my career whatsoever beyond being a bit of an ego boost. Far more important to me are my clippings, which reassure editors I might not have worked with before and might not know me, that I can be trusted to turn in a good piece of work—and to deadline too.
Finally, if you could go back and offer one piece of advice to your younger self when you started freelance writing, what would it be? Is there anything you would have approached differently?
When I started out, I got angsty about every pitch and treated every one like a newborn baby, which made the inevitable rejections and editorial silence even harder to take. Now I’m able to see the pitching-rejections merry-go-round as just part of the job (most of the time).
It’s also worth noting that if an editor gives you a compliment, they mean it. They’re busy people and don’t write words just to make people feel better. Just last week I got a ‘great idea but’ rejection, and I ran with the ‘great idea’ bit and tried to forget the rest. After all, if they thought it was a great idea, another editor might too.
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