Can You Trust Your Travel Guidebook?

Pickard's response: "Kohnstamm's assertion that his poor research practices are acceptable and common is false."

Responding to a Washington Post blog item on the topic, a reader called "DP" wrote: "I am shocked! I always thought all those reviewers were anonymous. That's the best way to write a review of something. Show up when they don't know and don't have their best foot forward. Find out how they treat the 'regular' people. You can't do an honest, reliable job with them knowing you are coming."

For its part, the staff of The Post's Travel section travels incognito whenever possible and accepts no freebies. Freelance contributors are required to sign contracts stating that they traveled anonymously and accepted no favors, and must disclose any possibility of the appearance of a conflict of interest with their editor.

'More Shoe Leather Than Genius'

Kohnstamm's revelations have prompted other guidebook writers to speak out.

Jeanne Oliver, a former Lonely Planet writer based in Nice, France, recently ripped the company for shifting from a royalty model, in which the writer's income is based on book sales, to a work-for-hire deal, with the writers getting a one-time fee covering both expenses and payment.

In a posting to an in-house message board for Lonely Planet writers, Oliver, who says she worked for the company as a freelance writer from 1996 to 2006, calls Kohnstamm's conduct a "disgrace" that "smears the many hardworking writers who have poured their professional lives into turning out the 'bibles' that travellers use."

But, she says, his revelations were "a car crash that was waiting to happen" because of Lonely Planet's "wrongheaded" policies on compensation and royalties.

"For most authors, most of the time, you are not paying enough to properly write and research a book. And you haven't for a number of years now," she says in her post to her former bosses. "You are begging authors to cut corners somehow, somewhere or, on the other hand, to help finance the book out of their own pocket. It takes very, very few authors running around cutting deals for themselves to ruin this company's reputation. As we now see."

Pickard said that compensation varies by assignment and that the company doesn't disclose payment figures. Writers are paid a lump sum, he said, and each has to pay for travel expenses out of that sum.

"How they choose to manage that money is up to them," Pickard said, "but we work very hard to make sure this offer includes enough money for them to visit every location mentioned in the book and come home with a fair fee in their pockets."

Pickard said Lonely Planet recently conducted a survey that found the company's writers are paid as well as or better than writers for key competitors. But several writers interviewed for this story said that when their fees are divided by the number of hours worked, they come to less than minimum wage. Notable exceptions were Avalon's Moon guides and Rick Steves's guides.

Steves, who remains the primary researcher for his line of guides, said it's "a trust to write and research a guidebook." Reached in Lisbon, where he is updating his Portugal guide, he said in an e-mail, "The formula is more shoe leather than genius."