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Rest in peace, Lonely Planet scandal: A final note from Thomas Kohnstamm
[Over the past few days, I've been in contact with former Lonely Planet author Thomas Kohnstamm via e-mail discussing the recent controversy surrounding him. Since he believes he's been unfairly criticized, I offered him the opportunity to share his side of the story on Gadling, as he's already done on World Hum. Here's what he wrote.]
"When I was discussing some of the difficulties faced by guidebook writers, I explained that it was often difficult to visit every establishment and remote town in person. The journalist asked me if sometimes people never visited the countries at all. I said that there is such a thing as a "desk update," which is somewhat common in the whole travel publishing industry (although very infrequent at LP).
He asked if I had ever done something like that and I explained that I had written about Colombia even though I had not gone there for the project. He asked why and I explained that there was not enough money for it (my advance was less than the cost of a flight down). Therefore I did a desk update, which was sanctioned by Lonely Planet. They made the decision that I was to write about it from home, not me.
I did normal research and got additional details from the Colombian girl I was dating at the time. Any professional travel writer out there knows that desk updates happen and are sanctioned by the publisher. It is a budgetary reality."
[Hi, Aaron again. I'd like to, if it's okay with everyone else, pronounce this "scandal-but-not-really-but-maybe-it-is" officially dead and buried. Rest in peace.]
Filed under: Arts and Culture, Books, Budget Travel
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
paul Apr 15th 2008 8:53PM
Please. The guy wrote a book about "questionable ethics" in his work. Boy, what a coincidence that this controversy popped up, getting him three or four days of free advertising on various websites. Here's hoping he never gets a book deal again.
Tony Apr 15th 2008 11:15PM
Umm... Didn't he write, like, the HISTORY section in that book? Did he hope Lonely Planet would send him to Colombia to write that? Wow!
Or was he maybe sensationalising what is a complete non-story in the hopes of publicity for his new book?
Marilyn Terrell Apr 19th 2008 4:57AM
It sounds like Lonely Planet never expected him to travel to Colombia to update the history section, because the money they paid him was less than the cost of a roundtrip ticket. Frank Bures has a longer interview with him at WorldHum:
http://www.worldhum.com/qanda/item/thomas_kohnstamm_the_firestorm_around_do_travel_writers_go_to_hell_20080414/