THE JUNKETEERS: A Tale of Press Trip Thrills & Nightmares
By Julie Besonen & Baroness Sheri de Borchgrave
Kindle Direct Publishing, $2.99
March 2014
THE JUNKETEERS is an insider's look at press trips, a fancier name for junkets--the highs, the lows, the adventures and naughtiness of journalists unleashed. Countess Jacqueline de Beaumont covers sex and wine for glossy magazines, lustily testing out the local flavor wherever she goes. New-to-the-circuit food and travel writer Marin Flynn is so enthralled by the countess she naively follows her incessant advice, which inevitably backfires. The two women join up with other colorful—and sometimes unbearable---junketeers on trips to Poland, Fiji, Scotland, Bali and Argentina. Their fractious and funny friendship is tested everywhere from a disastrous cuddle party in Manhattan to a storm-tossed lifeboat in Patagonia.
See the video here.
Replies
Most certainly, The Baroness has earned enough money from her Real Housewives "reality" show and well-paid "celebrity" appearances to be able to afford to hire and pay real money to a real media relations or public relations pro to promote this e-book, instead of scamming this free resource for real, honest, hard-working travel media professionals.
As a longtime professional travel journalist who travels (often) with two or three cameras, a notebook and digital tape recorder, and struggles with unfriendly or obtuse internet connections in foreign hotels and/or cities I might change daily on a press trip, I am personally and professionally insulted by the terms junket and/or junketeers.
I wish The Baroness good luck marketing this e-book, but I have better things to do with $2.99, and with my reading time.
Evelyn Kanter
Freelance Travel Writer & Guidebook Author
www.ecoXplorer.com
Evelyn, you have the wrong countess/ baroness. I am not the countess in Real Housewives reality show. And I am not a celebrity with money to hire and pay funds to a media relations person to promote this book.
If you look at my resume on the website, I have been a writer for years. In the 90's I wrote a book about my disastrous marriage to a Belgian baron. It's quite a story and I got no inheritance after he died. Look up A Dangerous Liaison. I have to work for a living and like you I am a hard working journalist who travels with cameras, notebooks, and recorder and gets my stories. I've written many travel stories over the years from remote locations as well.
The title Junketeers is not meant to insult the profession. It is a funny name for press trips and if you read the book, you will see it is a hilarious portrayal.
Baroness Sheri de Borchgrave, co-author with Julie Besonen of THE JUNKETEERS