Chris Guillebeau has achieved what few others have — just one of hundreds of travel bloggers when he set out to become a writer less than three years ago, his first book made Amazon.com’s Top 100 list as soon as it was published last week. Now he is on an “unconventional book tour” that will take him to all 50 states.
If you’ve read my profile of Guillebeau in the Washington Times, you won’t be surprised by the “unconventional” designation. His blog on “life, work and travel” is called “The Art of Non-Conformity,” and that’s also the book’s title.
“I help people live unconventional lives — to think differently, question assumptions and authority, find out what they are passionate about and overcome gatekeepers,” he told me during a visit to Washington last year. “For me, a large part of challenging authority involves looking for alternatives to the way most people do things.”
The way Guillebeau became a writer was certainly alternative to the standard path, which I took by working as a journalist in the so-called mainstream media for 18 years and writing for established publications like the Financial Times. At 32 — four years my junior — he has succeeded without the help of a reputable newspaper or another gatekeeper. Since early 2008, when he created his blog, he has attracted thousands of readers, and many of them have become dedicated followers — he calls them a small army.
Although he didn’t need anyone else to publish his writings in order to reach his audience directly, his ambition was to write a book, and there are certainly gatekeepers to overcome in that endeavor. But the number of his existing readers and his idea were enough to land him a book agent, who was able to negotiate a publishing contract with the Penguin Group. Incidentally, Penguin is owned by Pearson PLC, the British company that also owns the Financial Times.
In Guillebeau’s words, the central message of the book is: “You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to. You can do good things for yourself and make the world a better place at the same time. Here’s how to do it.” This is where you get the book and find out.
The other unconventional aspect of Guillebeau’s book tour is that Penguin didn’t have money to organize a tour, which is a rare luxury these days, so he decided to self-finance it.
You will no doubt notice the graphic similarities between the book’s cover and Guillebeau’s website. They were both created by Reese Spykerman, a very talented American designer currently living in Asia, where I met her last year — of course, Guillebeau had something to do with that encounter.
I had corresponded with Guillebeau by e-mail and written about him in my column as early as 2008, but he didn’t mention his book project until our first phone conversation in early 2009. I called him from Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, during a refueling stop on my way back from Asia with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
When he came to Washington last fall, I invited him to the State Department and showed him the briefing room and my office — more precisely, my cubicle in the correspondents’ room. Over lunch in the cafeteria, we did the interview on which the Times profile was based.
As you can see from my website, I’ve interviewed many famous people — Sharon Stone, Denzel Washington, Kevin Costner, John Malkovich, Conan O’Brien, Walter Cronkite, Larry King, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, to name a few — but sometimes it’s talking to and writing about real people that gives a journalist more professional satisfaction.
Ironically, now I’m in the position Guillebeau was in two years ago, trying to build a small business — and I find myself learning from his experience. His project was to help people lead unconventional lives, mine is to educate people how to be better travelers. We are both passionate about democratizing travel — making it more affordable, comfortable and enjoyable for more people — so don’t be surprised if we work together in the future.
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Continue reading about ‘Unconventional book tour’ in 50 states
British Prime Minister David Cameron surprised many this week by traveling to Washington for his first official White House visit since taking office on a commercial British Airways flight, instead of taking a dedicated plane, to save money. Now some Americans are wondering if U.S. officials could follow suit.
Having traveled around the world with four U.S. secretaries of state — Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright — over the last decade, I can see how commercial flying would save the State Department millions of dollars a year. However, it would also guarantee a logistical nightmare.
Most people don’t know that Clinton has been taking commercial flights since she became secretary of state, but that happens only when she goes home to New York from DC. Work-related flights to New York are flown on small Air Force planes.
On foreign trips, the security detail and the staff accompanying the secretary make for a large entourage that would be hard to accommodate on one commercial aircraft in business or first class. Knowing the security requirements, I’m guessing regular passengers would be required to board two hours before takeoff.
More importantly, the secretary often visits more than one country in one day, so trying to accomplish that commercially is practically impossible. Not to mention that nonstop flights don’t exist to many destinations most of the time.
Last year, I wrote two columns detailing Clinton’s first trip as America’s chief diplomat.
Rice used to take a smaller plane than the C-32 — the Air Force version of the Boeing 757 — on quite a few trips. That required most of the staff and press corps to fly commercially, which was fine with me, since I flew much more comfortably and got tons of frequent-flier miles.
Apparently, Cameron didn’t have the limitations mentioned above, and there are plenty of nonstop stop between London and DC. It’s impressive, though, that he flew in business class — not first — and his meetings in DC were arranged around the British Airways schedule, according to the British press. His two immediate predecessors, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, also flew on a BA plane, but it was chartered and dedicated to them.
Speaking of the State Department and saving money on travel, I’ve witnessed excessive spending of taxpayers dollars for years, but that’s a topic for another column.
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Have you ever wondered what it’s like traveling with the secretary of state around the world? Although I’ve been doing it for more than eight years, I’ve resisted frequent suggestions by friends and colleagues to write about it.
Now I’ve found an excuse. There is a new secretary — Hillary Rodham Clinton no less — and she has just completed her first overseas trip since taking office. So it’s time to step back from what has become a routine for us in the press corps and try to look at it through a fresh pair of eyes.
The State Department usually gives us 13 seats on the secretary’s plane, but this time we got three more, to accommodate the bigger interest in Mrs. Clinton’s maiden voyage to Asia…
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The arrival of a new administration in Washington signifies different things to different people, and for some of us it means that we’ll have new travel companions for the next four years. It looks like we in the diplomatic press corps will be sharing a plane with Hillary Rodham Clinton.
People often roll their eyes when I tell them that traveling around the world with the secretary of state is not that glamorous, but the waning months of an administration are a case in point.
Reporters are happiest when they cover good stories, and it has been a while since a trip by Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s chief diplomat — or by Mr. Bush, for that matter — created real excitement among the press corps. Many news organizations have been skipping those trips lately, saving tens of thousands of dollars that were needed to cover a long and expensive presidential campaign…
Continue reading about Press ready for Obama, Clinton travel
