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1st December 2008

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Lonely Planet hits back at poor pay claims

17.04.08 Victoria Arnstein

Lonely Planet has hit back at claims that it does not pay enough for its authors to visit the countries they are writing about.

The comments come on the back of an interview given by one of its authors, Thomas Kohnstamm, about his own book Do Travel Writers go to Hell?, in which he said he was not paid enough to actually visit Columbia for one of the guides he wrote for LP.

Responding to comments from rival travel publishers which blamed Lonely Planet's commissioning methods for the slur, travel editor Tom Hall said: "We believe very strongly that when it comes to author conditions we are an industry leader. We review our fees annually and have increased them by 23% over the last 18 months."

He added that with the guide to which Kohnstamm was referring—a now out of print edition—he had not been required to visit Columbia because he was considered to be an authority on the subject and was only writing the history, food and drink, environment and culture sections. "We felt comfortable commissioning him to do that because he has a degree in Latin American studies," added Hall.

The four titles other Kohnstamm contributed to which are still in print are now under review and Hall said that if anything is found to be wrong, Lonely Planet would "fix it".

He added that he hoped Kohnstamm's claims would not have a long-term effect on people's trust in the Lonely Planet brand or others. "This calls for other guides and authors to be scrutinised and I think that is desperately unfair. We trust our authors and that has not been eroded by what we consider to be a one off."

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