Our Presentation

We will be making presentations at both the Denver and the Bay Area (March 2024) events. In a session entitled, Wanderlust Masterclass: A Roadmap for Epic Adventures (Even with Kids!), we will help the audience prepare for their epic adventure of a lifetime. Our presentation on the Savvy Traveler Stage will include critical information about closing up life at home, funding extended travel, planning an itinerary, staying healthy on the road, and coming home when the time is right. The Wanderlust Masterclass will be valuable for curious and experienced travelers, industry professionals, parents, destination representatives looking to understand the family travel sector, remote workers, soon-to-be grandparents, and anyone with wanderlust in their hearts. 

Travel and Adventure Community

This year marks the 20th year of the Travel & Adventure Show series, which has inspired and connected over 2.1 million travel enthusiasts with advisors, industry experts, and media. The Denver Travel & Adventure show will take place at the Colorado Convention Center on January 20 and 21, 2024. The Bay Area Travel Show happens on March 16-17, 2024 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Other stops in the series include Chicago, New York, Phoenix, Washington DC, Atlanta, and Dallas. According to recent market research, Travel & Adventure Show attendees are considered “power travelers.” They are eagerly looking to make domestic and international travel plans. They come to the Travel & Adventure Show prepared to make decisions, and 95% of attendees say they find the shows valuable and plan to return to the show in subsequent years.

We’re delighted to be among some leading voices in the travel space, including Andrew McCarthy (actor, director, and travel writer), Pauline Frommer (Co-President of Frommer Media), Peter Greenberg (Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter), and Patricia Schultz (author of 1000 Places to See Before You Die). And we can’t wait to meet more like-minded lovers of travel! In addition to a conference format with a full lineup of speakers, the Travel & Adventure Show also has a dynamic exhibition hall with thousands of travel experts offering inspiration and guidance. In the hall, attendees can meet with destination specialists and other professionals and find special promotional deals and travel incentives while making connections across a vast community. 

Come Say Hello

We are thrilled that copies of Wonder Year will be available at pop-up bookstores during each event—Barnes and Noble (Booth 906 in Denver) and Hicklebees (Booth 317 in the Bay Area). These bookstores will host author meet and greets + book signings after the Wonder Year speaking event.

We are thankful for our partnership with the 2024 Travel & Adventure Show, as our respective organizations exist for very similar reasons. We want to support all types of travelers in pursuit of a fulfilling and enriching life through travel, discovery, and adventure. We want to help them dream up, personalize, and start planning their next big trip, and we know that amazing things can happen during in-person meetings like the Travel & Adventure Show. If you’d like to attend the show this year, you can use the promo code: WONDERYEAR24 to get tickets for $12, which is $6 off regularly priced entry tickets.

A Personal Note from Julie:

I am so excited to participate as a featured speaker at the #DenverTravelShow. When I came back from 13 months of travel with my family, I had an overwhelming desire to climb to the highest mountain and shout out to everyone, “GO! Get out on the road with your family! You can do it!” Our trip was hands-down the best year ever for me, my husband, and our son. It created a backpack full of shared memories for our family and a sense of connection with people and places around the globe. 

Having the chance to be on the Savvy Traveler Stage in Denver and the Bay Area feels like being on top of that mountain and shouting to the world, “You’ve got this, friend. Let’s go!” 

See you in Denver or the Bay Area!

Come on down and say hello!

The post Wonder Year to Present at the Denver Travel & Adventure Show appeared first on Wonder Year Travel.

Launch Week

We launched on September 5, the day after Labor Day, so as most were settling back into school or work, we were experiencing a wild mix of

She’s here!

emotions–excitement, relief, anticipation, but mostly not really knowing what the day would hold. Launch day meant our book could officially be sold in stores, online retailers could mail it out, and we had a webinar in the early evening to “launch.” So many of these first day actions were less tangible than you might expect. 

After four years of writing, pitching, and designing our book, it was an odd sensation to launch. Waking up that morning I thought I might feel different. Instead, I woke up to a teenager asking me for money to go out for lunch with his friends. In other words, for me, it was way less glamorous than one might expect. Often dubbed a “Book Birthday,” the first week felt like a milestone birthday–across four days, we recorded multiple podcasts, hosted a webinar, attended book appearances, and held a party to dance and fete our book’s coming to life. We connected with friends from different periods in our lives as they sent congratulations and asked how to support and fete with us. We even added a press page to our website.

Book Store Appearances

All tallied, last month we had seven book signings and appearances in Colorado and California. Attendance swung from  standing-room-

It was so heartwarming to share Wonder Year with our hometown crowd at Boulder Bookstore.

only to just a handful of friends. We never knew what we might meet, so we had to be ready for it all. Our host, Jeffrey, of Colorado Springs’ Poor Richard’s Book Shoppe, told us we were their first in-person book event since COVID. (And we were competing with the Broncos home opener…) Folks switched their habits in 2020 from in-person events to online ones. I get it. I used to go to book readings all the time at our local Boulder Bookstore. In recent years, I haven’t gone to any unless I know the author personally. But when we did have an enthusiastic group with a critical mass, the feeling of sharing our book with both friends and strangers was deeply gratifying. 

Podcasts

It seems that podcasts have filled in the in-person book launch space. We did four podcasts and have five more in the pipeline for the fall. The podcast: asynchronous, video optional, and shareable online. Each host can tailor the questions and comments–in real time–to their audience. Although we assumed these would be voice only, some were later streamed to video, shared on YouTube, and as teasers on TikTok. We learned not to assume and made sure we showed up looking video-ready, and we delighted in the casual conversations about subjects we love–travel, family and education. 

Print Buzz

Another way to create buzz for a book launch is to appear in print and e-print publications. We were interviewed for six articles, including magazines for RVers, the quarterlies for our alma maters, and newsletters for direct and adjacent communities. We also wrote four guest articles ourselves. I did one for the website and newsletter of my former employer, another one for a women’s writing website, and Julie wrote a few for other organizations, including a local camper company. Buzz also comes from shorter call-outs from magazines, larger family travel networks, and connections on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. (See Press Page)

Tangible Rewards

Just before launch, we achieved Amazon new release bestseller status in two categories. Our ebook produced strong sales throughout the launch month. We’ve also gained some interest from REI, who is stocking Wonder Year on their website and in two Colorado store

After years of Zoom, we met our wonderful editor and marketing lead from our publisher, Wonderwell

locations. We will see where that relationship takes us.

The best part of book launch month–for all of us–was hearing from those we’ve impacted. These messages come to us through book reviews, face-to-face conversations, direct messages, and social media comments. We began this project with a mission: to create the book we wished we’d had before our own journeys. We began by saying sales, reviews, and buzz were not the goals (although it’s easy to lose sight of that fact in the midst of launch month). The goal was to create something of use to someone else. But deep down, it was more than that; the goal was to help others live more moments connected, inspired, and growing. Yes, this baby took four years of gestation, and it’s been a month of joy to feel as though we’ve achieved some humbled version of all those goals. We are now proud parents seeing our book out in the world.

So, book launch month was busy! And there’s much more to come, especially as we head into the holidays with Wonder Year included in some popular gift guides. Just one more reason I am thankful to be on a team of coauthors. I cannot imagine doing by myself all that we did as a collective team.

Circling back to the original question–what does a book launch look like for an independent author? It still feels like an event and gives the authors the opportunity to step away from the screen and the grind to celebrate. After our sold-out Boulder Bookstore appearance, we had a big party with desserts and dancing. If I could choose one four-hour period of happy satisfaction, that was it, rivaling any other major event in my life. Happy book birthday to Wonder Year.

The post Book Launch Month appeared first on Wonder Year Travel.

Once we’d finalized the book content edit, it was time to shift creative gears toward the interior and cover design for Wonder Year. Our publisher, Wonderwell, engaged a designer with a keen eye and artistic expertise to assist us with the process, which took a phased approach across several months. 

Phase 1 – Interior Design

The first phase was to design the book’s interior. We met our designer, Morgan Krehbiel, and shared background on Wonder Year so she could get a sense of our direction. Morgan then offered a first draft of sample interior pages and included questions for us on preferred page layout, fonts, and colors. She captured our desired look and feel beautifully on the first pass, and few modifications were needed. 

We wanted readers to be able to consume our book sequentially or in stand-alone sections, so spatial layout and navigational ease was important. Placement of headers, subheaders, sidebars, and textboxes all make this more manageable for the reader. And fonts convey such a range of moods! We loved several of the first round selections for the body and subheaders. The main title font didn’t feel quite right, as it called attention to itself rather than the text. We played with a few options and landed on an alternate font called that felt understated, clean, and approachable. 

We agreed with most of Morgan’s first-round color selections for the book. Of the palette of nine colors, we swapped only two. For one, we ended up choosing something a bit more edgy and outside the norm of our “earthy” color family for a bit of unexpected “pop” threaded through the book. Can you guess which one it was from this set? 

Given the nature of Wonder Year, we decided that interior artwork and photos would enhance the reader’s visual experience and help bring the text to life. “Milepost” artwork graphics give one’s eyes a place to rest. Finding the right set of artwork, and then custom-coloring it for our book, took additional design time. 

Photo selection and editing was a huge undertaking. We decided to use our own travel photos, as we didn’t want the imagery to look like “stock.” We each had thousands of images, so it took many rounds of review and selections to choose photos that would enhance the story and provide the reader with inspiration of what a Wonder Year can be. We also had to balance families, geographies, activities, and storytelling moments to support the how-to content and travel vignettes. Many snapshots taken by  phones could only be used in small insets. We needed full-spread chapter openers to have been taken using our best cameras. After finally locking in our team selections and placement, there was a late curveball from our publisher, who told us to cut one-third of our photos to help reduce the book’s page count! We hope where we ultimately landed feels just right.

Phase 2 – Cover Design Ideation

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but then everyone does it anyway. A book’s cover makes a huge difference in whether consumers will even pick it up, much less purchase and read it. Our cover design process started with visual brainstorming, including visiting bookstores to snap photos of other covers that caught our attention. Morgan told us that it was helpful to take notes along the way on what we liked and what we didn’t. Here’s what we shared with her:

• “We’re drawn to single or simpler image vs. collage of many images, hand-drawn art vs. icon style or a computer-generated feel, cover designs that have a sense of movement, imagery that conveys or hints at what the book is about, and titles that are easy to read vs. buried in a lot of other design features

• Our desired vibe is trusted friend, curated, expert, approachable, natural, how-to, and inspirational. We want to capture a sense of wonder, togetherness, and adventure. 

• We’re leaning away from using a cover photo, as it’s hard to find a single image that represents the whole worldschooling experience and that is inclusive of many types of travelers. We are also less drawn to collage of multiple images, as they feel busy. 
• We don’t want color-blocking design or strong, straight/bold-lined graphics, which seem to be used more for fiction and business books. These designs also compete with the casual, organic feel we’re going for.”

We captured ideas on a Pinterest board – check it out  so you can see what inspired us. Based on this feedback and a conversation together, Morgan designed a set of first-round mockups for our review. 

Phase 3 – Design Iteration and Selection

The review of initial designs screened for the main messages conveyed. Modern? Travel? Family? Guidebook? Those ideas are woven into the font, layout, imagery, and colors. Synchronicity with the interior art was important, too, so everything would feel cohesive to readers.

We kept two potential designs from round one, requesting some changes so we could consider them further. We eliminated two others that didn’t feel on target. In place of the eliminated options, we asked for a few fresh ideas and offered some additional direction.

Round two yielded two new designs that became our front-runners. Option A provided an image that clearly conveyed travel and movement and we liked its “scenes” theme, but we wanted it to have a clearer feeling of family. Option B clearly conveyed family travel and caught our attention. Although the vote within our author team was initially split, after a few iterations, Option A was eliminated because it was difficult to see its interesting details from even a short distance. Option B provided everything our cover needed and was our winner!

For quick look at some of our cover options, check out the video reel here.

This was a runner-up direction. What do you think?

Phase 4 – Refinement

The cover then underwent a series of changes and feedback rounds on final details. The end result needed to clearly communicate travel, education, and family, and it needed to work for both digital screens and bookstore shelves. 

This was really the nitty-gritty: we added backpacks to our family travelers and adjusted their sizes and straps. The family’s clothes were changed, as was the height of one of the kids to convey that a Wonder Year is for all ages. We spent considerable time ensuring the family felt inclusive. Then, what should they be walking on and toward? We also looked at title and subtitle font options, including subtle differences in letter slant to convey a sense of movement. Which word should the subtitle wrap on to make it easy to read? Should we raise the font, or add embossing, foiling, or a textured cover? Where do we put our names? The devil was in these details. We asked Morgan for a lot, and were ultimately thrilled with the refinements when we signed off on the final version.

Almost there. We thought the child on the right was too young, and maybe we wanted to add backpacks. Oh, and we changed the title in the 7th hour.

Phase 5 – Full Cover Development

Once the front cover design was locked in, we turned our attention to the full wrap, including the back cover and cover flaps. This included the book summary (so important for catching readers’ attention in 30 seconds or less), credits, social media contacts, and selection and placement of endorsements. Finally, we added our abbreviated author bios and photos, which made it all feel really, really, real!

As you can see, A LOT goes into the book design process. 

So…here’s our final cover. Looking back at the early list for our designer, how did we do??

The post Judging a Book by its Cover appeared first on Wonder Year Travel.

How to Market A Book

A few weeks ago, we finished the first marathon and sent our manuscript to the printer. We immediately had to decide how many books to print in the first run. This felt like a really consequential decision for us and we did not have a solid basis for choosing a number – 2000, 5000, 10,000? We did not want to have stacks of unsold books that would gather dust in a California warehouse. Nor did we want to print too few books and not be able to fulfill orders if sales exceeded our expectations.

We gathered as much intel as possible from our editor, the sales team and our own research and assumptions and put our best guess on paper. That decision positioned us on the starting line of our second marathon, introducing Wonder Year to the world and activating channels to sell our book.  

Whoa, where to begin? Should we start slow with a jog or hit it hard from the beginning? According to book marketing wiz, Naren Aryal, “to be a writer today is to be a marketer.” Looks like marathon #2 would be just as important as marathon #1. He argues that authors should start building their platform yesterday. Oops. 

We’d have to establish Wonder Year as a brand and the three of us as authors. We’d have to associate Wonder Year with long-term family travel and worldschooling. And then, connect with people who are curious about family travel to the book. 5-4-3-2-1: let’s go! 

Miles 1-3:

Establish a Website. For many authors, the website is the foundation of their platform, and this was certainly the case for us. We launched a fairly basic website in March 2022 and built out many more features over the following year. Our site had a book landing page, pre-order buttons, a blog, contact page, newsletter sign-up form, photos, and branded artwork. We wanted to be sure the

website did more than promote the book. It was important that it was also a valuable resource for current and prospective traveling families.

Miles 4-10:

Consistent Quality Content. With the website launched, the next order of business was to load it with helpful information about relevant topics. We are writing about topics like making the decision to travel, funding long-term family adventure, closing up home life, working on the road, and what it feels like to be a long-term traveling family in motion. We brainstormed topics of interest, like destination inspirations, a discussion on how to choose destinations and created a schedule to publish blogs, with a goal of posting at least one per week.  

Miles 10-14:

Social Media Platforms. The matter of social media was definitely a hard nut for us to crack. Each of us maintained a blog during our respective travels, but none of us was particularly active on social media anymore. We did not have thousands of followers. We had some moments of doubt and insecurity about putting ourselves out there so publicly, seemingly self-promoting, which felt antithetical to our purpose with Wonder Year. Yet, we knew it was imperative and we understood how effective it is to share information and build community through social platforms. 

We pushed on and picked up our pace a bit. We found joy in sharing tips, tricks and wisdom, knowing that our content was designed to inform others rather than spotlight ourselves. We diversified our posts with videos, photos, motivation Mondays, Tips Tuesdays, Where in the World Wednesdays. Later, we learned how to effectively present information in a variety of formats on different platforms.Now, we have started to see steady, organic growth across several months of concerted effort. 

Miles 14-18:

Strategic Partnerships. Wonderwell, our publisher, provided us with a framework to organize our partner outreach campaign. We brainstormed a long list of organizations, nonprofits, and influencers. We looked for those who share an interest in one or more of the Wonder Year themes–travel, education, family, inclusivity, global community, outdoor adventure and sustainability–and began reaching out. The process of building partnerships is a bit improvisational, more art than science. Our goal and hope is to find shared purpose with a set of public, private, nonprofit, and individual partners and appeal to their customers, stakeholders and members together.

Miles 18-22:

Media and Publications. Many authors, including us, use a public relations professional to assist with outreach to traditional media. Publicists know the ropes and how to pitch a story. However, because we are family travel and worldschooling experts, we expanded the media/publications list by identifying specialty outlets in these sectors. We are thinking broadly about local and national outlets including magazines, podcasts, radio shows, news sources and other print or digital media sources that connect with the Wonder Year journey. 

Miles 22-26:

Pre-launch. The six weeks before book launch are going to be dizzying. Testing our endurance, we’ll have to dig deep and keep running toward our goal of bringing a book to the world that will inspire and help families to get on the road together. We’ll be calling on partners, followers, and our personal connections to help spread the word about Wonder Year. We’ll ask folks to follow, like, repost, refer a friend, tag, pre-order and otherwise put good Wonder Year juju out there.

On September 5, 2023 Wonder Year: A Guide to Long-Term Family Travel and Worldschooling will hit the shelves. We appreciate your cheering from the sidelines and your encouragement along the way. We just have one more question for you: Have you ordered your copy? If not, you can right here!

Opportunities abound! Podcasts, magazine features, social media events, as well as the traditional book tour!

The post How to Write a Book: The Second Marathon appeared first on Wonder Year Travel.

Our first book marathon, that is. There’s a saying that writing a book is actually like running two marathons: the first is writing the book, and the second is getting news of that book out to audiences who might find it helpful and interesting.

We recently sent our book off to the printer – a milestone that capped years of endurance training and learning new skills. For each of us, Wonder Year is our first book, and every step in the creative process has required massive amounts of new learning. Close friends and family have kindly asked us about the process of how to write a book, and others have expressed curiosity because they, too, have an idea that keeps them up at night thinking, “maybe I need to write this book” (check out our blog Birth of a Book). Maybe you have an incredible story you’d love to get published. In response to those inquiries, we thought we’d shed some light on what the process of writing a book has been like for us.

The race course was a tricky one because there were so many routes from the start line to the finish, and sometimes we didn’t know which direction to run. Plus, writing a book with co-authors meant that during some stretches, one of us was ready to sprint while another needed to rest (here’s a blog on coauthorship). And the number of published books has exploded in the last several years, making for an increasingly crowded field. That said, there are a slew of resources (a few of our faves are Jane Friedman, Jen Louden, and the Write Life) out there to support would-be authors. 

Miles 1-3: Ideation

When we three authors first came together, we had much to discuss: our respective trips, what had gone well, what hadn’t, what we wished we’d known before leaving, and what we learned while traveling. We also journaled together and captured our thoughts about the experience. We then brainstormed and considered our potential audience. What problems were we trying to solve for others? Who were our future readers and what needs do they have? Through those reflective discussions, a draft outline of key ideas and interconnected concepts started to emerge…the beginnings of eventual book chapters.

Miles 4-12: Writing

This stage was all about getting ideas onto the page. Our goal was for what Annika, via author Annie Lamott in Bird by Bird, calls a “shitty first draft.” Exact words and correct punctuation weren’t important yet–ideas and creativity and voice were. Finding these meant writing, researching, writing, discussing, writing, and writing some more. Oh, and keeping track of sources as we went, so we wouldn’t have to hunt them down again later. 

Co-authorship brought a twist to the writing process. On the one hand, it was incredibly helpful to divide and conquer, and we divvied up the chapters based on our backgrounds and strengths. On the other, whatever was written then had to be shared to ensure we were literally on the same page. A lesson learned: we left each author to figure out the direction of her chapters, and it would have been more efficient to outline a direction together before launching into writing. Nonetheless, we were well aligned on what felt important to share with readers.

Refueling Station

Once we had a rough draft of several chapters (note: not all!), we evaluated ways to bring our book to market and decided to send out submissions to potential publishers. We’ll talk more about that process in a future blog post. We ultimately decided to sign with a publisher who showed great enthusiasm for our book, Wonderwell Press. Since joining forces at the halfway point, their expert team of editors, project managers, designers and marketers have been supporting our journey. 

Miles 13-23: Editing

Book editing is typically divided into three major stages – the developmental edit, the substantive edit, and copyediting. 

Developmental edit – This is a review of the major elements of the book and their construction. Our editor provided the first read-through of the manuscript by anyone outside our little team, and we awaited her feedback with bated breath. Through an editorial letter and a series of collaborative discussions, she shared that she liked our direction and found our messages resonant. She also suggested that readers needed more opportunities to connect with the three fellow travelers guiding them. We had initially leaned away from this, thinking we didn’t want the book to be “about us,” but her perspective was helpful and we added several new sections as a result: more descriptive biographies, background on why we each took a Wonder Year, and the “Stories from the Road” vignettes that now appear throughout and help anchor the book.

Substantive edit – For a non-fiction book like ours, the substantive edit looks at the organization and flow of ideas, assessing it to ensure messages are clear, consistent, and engaging. With three authors co-writing, we also had to make sure we didn’t unwittingly repeat material or contradict ourselves across chapters. Recognizing a desire for readers to be able to easily carry our book while traveling, a sharpened page count goal prompted significant content-cutting (exactly why it’s not worth spending too much time on grammar and punctuation in those early drafts). This reworking and revising also delivered a smoother blend of our three writing styles. We had worried that switching voices between chapters could be jarring to readers, but as we traded edits and helped each other with rewrites, it became difficult to tell who had written what (in fact, our editors still don’t know to this day).

Copyedit – This is the nitty-gritty phase: the line-by-line, word-by-word edit. Like whether the H in hector’s dolphins is capitalized or how to stylistically include words from other languages like khang bed. We worked with another talented editor for this round. The four of us tracked a maelstrom of changes, comments and suggestions over several iterative rounds, and collectively worked through every. single. one. Under tight deadlines. Let’s just say it involved a lot of red, and sometimes that red seemed like real blood oozing from blisters inside our running shoes.

Miles 24-26: Proofreading

Although we did our own review and passed along suggestions, this phase was primarily out of our hands and left to our publisher’s proofreading team. They made final corrections and ensured consistent use of spelling, capitalization and punctuation rules according to their selected style guide. After everything was complete and we all signed off on the manuscript, it was passed like a baton to our designer for next steps!

Mile 26.2

The (first) finish line! We wrote a book!!

Part two of this series will look at the next marathon–the one we’re running right now: building an author platform and marketing the heck out of our book.

It sure is nice to hold it in our hands.

The post How to Write a Book: the First Marathon appeared first on Wonder Year Travel.

The conversations made the final product more than the sum of its parts.

What does the collaborative writing process look like? We started with individual brainstorms for what information we wanted to include and bullet points of what would go into each chapter. Then we combined, refined, and created an outline. It was uncanny how in sync we were. After we talked through each chapter, adding anecdotes and stories, we divided them up to write our–as writer Anne Lamott famously coined–“shitty first draft.” Then, we gave each other extensive feedback, interviewed other travelers and influencers, and incorporated new information and fresh perspectives into the second and “less shitty” draft. Next we sought outside feedback, beginning the long march toward publishing.

Web conferences made the meetings convenient while we could share screens and have multiple documents open.

 How do you blend the voices of three writers? We wanted our book to read like advice from encouraging and experienced friends. Friends who are willing to take off the Instagram veneer of ecstatic travel and show the underbelly–the obstacles and the

perseverance required to take a dream and turn it into a Wonder Year. In our minds, multiple voices and points of view are the benefits of a collaborative piece of writing. In the final drafts, we each inserted a bit of our own voice to the text. Even if a chapter wasn’t first written by Angela, if we decided that it needed more of her organization and clarity, she would rewrite sections. Another chapter might need a bit more of Julie’s humor. We found that collaboration helped fill out our advice and stories. 

The paybacks to collaboration are many. First, I got to spend time with two inspirational women who share my passion, urge me on when I doubt myself, and keep me on task. Collaboration is joyful when it’s a shared passion project. In many ways, the writing of this book has been another Wonder Year for me.

Oh so many drafts!

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