Lonely Planet’s Bad Trip

A bit of a media storm is brewing over insider revelations by ex-Lonely Planet travel writer Thomas Kohnstamm.

Kohnstamm’s soon-to-be-published book “Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?” claims to blow the cover off the travel guide book industry. He claims that much of the content he wrote was plagiarized or fraudulent because the low pay and short deadlines made it simply impossible to do the work ethically.

Lonely Planet has posted a rebuttal on their website.

In Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree travel forums, there is quite an outrage brewing. The outrage is partially over the content of Kohnstamm’s article, partially over a perception that LP and their parent company (The BBC) has quashed some of the postings on the topic in the South America forum.

Several blogs have written damning criticism of Kohnstamm including “5 reasons to be outraged by the Lonely Planet fraud” at Gadling and one article by Eva Holland predicting that hell will be the destination for Kohnstamm at Brave New Traveler.

But some travel writers, like David Stanley, stand alongside Kohnstamm in saying that the wages to guidebook writers can’t possibly fund the hands-on research that the guidebooks say they provide.

“To save money and maintain full control, Lonely Planet often assigns inexperienced office clerks and interns to update their guides. Little wonder that some of these underpaid novices resort to plagiarism. My books have been copied by Lonely Planet writers time and again … Today Lonely Planet updaters get no royalties and must sign away all rights, even moral rights. Thus it’s no surprise that the quality of Lonely Planet guides is so uneven.”

Here are my thoughts.

Kohnstamm has written or contributed to 12 books. After one or two he would have known that, if, as he claims, the work was impossible to do for the budget allocated, then he could have walked away. He chose to stay and write more–nobody forced him to do it.

He freely admits that he has passed off work that contains fabrications in the past–so any claims he makes now–especially ones that line his pocket (by promoting his tell-all book) should be taken with a great deal of skepticism.

I know several guidebook writers. The ones I know personally are solid people and their work is outstanding. I travel in the places they write about and I have used their books. I have never been disappointed or mislead.

I have never had a really bad experience with LP guidebooks–other than some prices and info being out of date–but that’s a dead-tree publishing issue, not just guidebooks or Lonely Planet.

(By dead-tree publishing issue, I mean that, by the time you print something on a dead tree and distribute it, the information printed on the paper is no longer current. Say you buy a guidebook the day it hits the shelves of your local bookstore; the information contained in it is 6-24 months old (that’s how long it took the writer to compile his notes, the editor to edit it, the printer to print it, the shipper to ship it, etc.); if the book has a 2 year shelf life–the information is quite dated.)

On the flip side, I do know that, in spite of LP’s claim that “we lead the industry in the fees we pay, and are committed to a yearly review of author fees,” the fees to guidebook writers in general have been going down–and the cost of living and traveling has been going up. Lower wages mean that some of the best people will walk away from the work.

I know the time it takes to do the field research (I have done it myself) and I know the volume of research required and the ballpark of the fees paid and Kohnstamm’s assertion that it’s not enough to do thorough research rings quite true.

One thing is for sure: Kohnstamm’s claims will have reverberations in the industry. Guidebooks will have to scrutinize who they hire and how their material is compiled. It will also make travelers think a bit more critically about the books they read.

Having had travel guides on the brain for the better part of 10 years now, I see there are some real problems with the travel content industry in general. The volume of information that must be researched, sifted and sorted is gargantuan. It takes a small army to do that kind of work. Communities can form that sort of small army–but then you run into the problems of credibility and reputation as well. (Without authorship that is credible and reputable you can nver achieve authority–ad guidebooks are nothing without some measure of authority-that’s why this scandal has so much potential to damage Lonely Planet.)

My burning question is: how do you utilize community and still be able to surmount the issues of credibility and reputability of the contributors so you retain a level of quality and authority?