Follow the guidelines - Jeremy Head tells us what its really like to write a guide book.

Ever wondered what it's like being a guidebook writer? Jeremy Head wrote his first guideook for Frommer's last summer, Frommer's Seville Day by Day and he tells us what its like:

It seemed like a natural progression. I'd been writing freelance travel features for newspapers and magazines for several years. Most people think this must be the best job in the world. Being paid to swan around visiting places. In reality it's hard work and not very well paid. One destination quickly begins to look like another. To make the job pay you spend the minimum time necessary in a place to get your story. Consequently it can be frustrating. You see the briefest of snapshots - just enough to pepper your prose with some local colour that's hopefully not too clichéd, and then back on the plane home.

But guidebooks? Well that requires getting to know a place intimately. Understanding its rhythms, its personalities, its life. Discovering rather than just looking and recording. I'd been to Seville several times and loved it. What could be better than spending a whole summer there? 

First things first though. There was no expense account, no business class flight and no five star hotel. You get an advance. And the more you spend of it, the less there is to pay the mortgage back home. There's no travel agent either. I had to find myself accommodation. I settled on a small bed-sit in the Alameda area which proved a really good choice. This is Seville's boho zone, once all tumble down squats, it's now a funky up and coming bar area, full of atmosphere and crucially a 15 minute walk to the historic centre where I spent most of my time.

They say it's not what you know, it's who you know - and that's certainly true for guidebook writing. Whilst I knew the city well, there were plenty of people who knew it better. I just needed to find them. Even before I left. I used online chatrooms, Facebook, the accommodation agency I found my apartment through. I asked everyone I knew if they knew anyone in Seville. The agency came up trumps putting me in touch with David Cox who runs a tour company called Reallydiscover.com. David was a fount of information and has become a good friend. A friend back home put me in touch with John and his partner Christine who were brilliant. They leant me a bike and they showed me some of the city's best tapas bars and kept me sane by taking me out for beer and pizza.

Once I arrived in Seville, my first port of call was the local tourist office. I left laden with brochures and maps. Then I spent a week dashing about like mad, seeing random stuff that I kept thinking might work in one chapter… or maybe another? The size of my task quickly felt immensely daunting - 30,000 words, 40-odd maps. And pictures too, I had to take several hundred of  them. Calming words from my editor Mark were most welcome. "Marathon not a sprint" was the phrase he used. I needed to plan, plan, plan. The fact that the Frommer's Day by Day format is very defined proved a blessing in disguise. The guides are built around walking tours. Having a framework made breaking the task into manageable chunks much easier.

I set out to create my walks, using several locally produced walking tour maps as a baseline. It proved immensely satisfying, working out the stops, marking them on a map, taking pictures to illustrate them, making notes. But it was hard, painstaking work too. I'd get up and write for a few hours, eat lunch and then head into the afternoon heat to walk my next tour. I often wrote for several hours in the evening too. Sleep was not a problem. I worked seven day weeks and pounded those ancient winding streets. I thanked my lucky stars that John had leant me that bicycle too.

Bit by bit the chapters came together. What particularly struck me was that unlike writing a travel feature where you're selective, choosing only the activities and places you personally like, for a guidebook you need to be far more inclusive. So, I might not be a fan of adventure parks, but for a family with kids, Seville's one - Isla Magica - would make a great afternoon out. I like to eat cheap tapas rubbing shoulders with locals at noisy bars and quaff Rioja from the barrel, but many of my readers would want to dine in some of Seville's many classy restaurants.

Good research is time consuming. The internet has made us used to having information a mouse-click away. There's stacks of stuff in cyberspace, but how accurate is it? And how up to date? And how unbiased? I visited every single shop, restaurant, hotel and attraction in the listings sections of Day By Day Seville. On my count that's several hundred places. I marked them all on maps. I took pictures. I met chefs. I sampled food. I chatted to shop keepers in my awful Spanish.

It wasn't all smooth going. Someone nicked that bike. How was I going to admit that to John? To his credit he laughed. I'd left it locked to a street sign, but somehow, someone had managed to pull the sign out of the concrete. Unreal. I didn't get all the shots I needed and had to make a one-week dash back to Seville to get 20 or so more pictures of restaurants and hotels two weeks before my deadline. And that format. It had sting a in the tail. I had to write up my copy using complicated Word templates. Margins in publishing are very tight. Publishers are always finding ways to cut costs. Getting the author to almost design his own pages seemed like it was one of them.

By the time I came to hand over copy and pics along with 40-odd maps all marked up and with keys, I'd lived in Seville on and off for three months. I was homesick and sick of the guidebook. But several months later, I've forgotten a lot of the slog. And there's no denying the sense of satisfaction I feel now I have a shiny new guidebook to Seville in front of me. It certainly wasn't the easiest job I've done, but it's fantastic to have something so tangible to show for it. I think it looks great and I also think that the Day By Day series are uniquely smart in the way they focus on distilling the best from a destination, offering it to the reader in an easy-to-use map-driven format. There's no need to fumble back and forth between maps and words – everything is nicely integrated. It works very well.

Seville is one of Europe's most romantic cities and it remains surprisingly undiscovered. I ate a lot of tapas and drank many very cold beers there. The longer I lived there the more I began to love the city, its crazy heat, its dead end alleyways, its awesomely romantic Moorish architecture, its exuberant people. I can't recommend it highly enough for a weekend break. And if you need a guidebook… well, you know, there's one I'd probably recommend. (If you do buy one, just remember too - that's 6 months of my life in there.)

And if you do go to Seville and see a bloke riding a bashed white bicycle with a wonky back tyre and a scuffed saddle. Let me know, I'm still looking for him. Find out what Jeremy's up to next at www.travelblather.com

Jeremy Head is an award-winning travel writer, photographer and broadcaster based in Brighton. Jeremy has been writing freelance travel features for five years and writes regularly for national newspapers and magazines. His work has appeared in The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Mail, industry newspaper Travel Weekly and travel magazines Wanderlust and Global. Jeremy was formerly Travel Editor for Independent Magazines, writing weekly travel features and news for their weekly titles: Girl About Town, Ms London, 9-5, Midweek, London and More and Living Abroad Magazine (LAM).

Frommer’s Seville Day by Day by Jeremy Head   978-0-470-51977-6 £7.99 Paperback

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