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Travel publishers slam Lonely Planet

16.04.08 Hannah Davies

Rival travel publishers have blamed Lonely Planet's commissioning methods for the revelation that one of its authors plagiarised and made up large sections of his books, and dealt drugs to compensate for poor pay.

Lonely Planet has responded to the claims, which appear in Thomas Kohnstamm's memoir Do Travel Writers go to Hell?, by undertaking a thorough review of any books still in print that Kohnstamm contributed to. Tom Hall, travel editor at LP, said: "We are obviously concerned about the integrity of his work as he has breached his contract and misled us. If there are any problems with content we will take whatever steps necessary."

But fellow travel publishers at the London Book Fair suggested LP's methods for signing up authors and putting its guide-books together could have played a part in the scandal.

Andy Riddle, Footprint m.d., said the news would give LP "pause for thought about the way they commission and manage authors".Bradt m.d. Donald Grieg said that the way authors are paid has an effect on the nature of the guide produced. "All our authors are on royalties, which sets a different tone from the start of any contractual agreement. They have an ongoing interest in the book and are involved right the way through." Ella Gascoigne, PR executive for Crimson, said the claims would be "hugely damaging" to LP.

Hall defended LP's methods, saying the publisher was happy with the quality of its authors. "All our authors have passed our entry procedures. We trust them to follow our policies; they sign a contract and there are specific requirements that their facts are true or reliably accurate. Our editors review the quality and content of all the work. While you can never be 100% certain, we take all reasonable steps to make our content accurate."

London Book Fair - Day Three

London Book Fair Lonely Planet travel guides Hannah Davies Home

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By lara_dunston

The publishers quoted above make some excellent points. Lonely Planet as an organization has been receiving a lot of flack over the scandal, but very little criticism has been leveled at the commissioning process. While there are some superb commissioning editors there, people who are passionate about producing high quality books, who boast excellent destination knowledge, who care about writers, and are loyal to writers who continue to produce excellent results for them, there are also CEs who know little if anything about the destination they're managing, who are fickle, using different authors for each edition, who make odd choices when it comes to commissioning, to the extent of selecting writers for a project who've never been to a destination and then flying them to the opposite side of the destination to write about it, and who place unreasonable expectations outlined in briefs of similar word counts to the task they're commissioning. And I haven't even started on the fees, which are definitely not in the upper range as has been suggested.

16 Apr 08 10:35

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By lara_dunston

woops! That should have been opposite side of the 'planet'... strange that word of all words didn't come to mind!

16 Apr 08 10:37

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By Shay Fodor

The question is if we need travel guides in 2008, when we have fellow travelers on-line that are more up to date than a book who was edited 2 years ago. In the case of backpacker places, not once I have found myself following the recommendation of "Lonely Planet" just to find out that the place has lost its reputation longtime ago. With TripAdvisor, WAYN and http://www.triptouch.com , one can find very easily up to date recommendations, travel mates and all the travel info one's need to get oriented while traveling . Travel guides need to adjust to the new era, minimize their books size and be more up to date if they want to survive the travel 2.0 era.

17 Apr 08 07:33

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