All his own work

I'm in a great hurry and shouldn't be doing this at all, but two events that would normally be fodder for this blog have taken place without comment appearing here: firstly the Tibetan riot/Olympic torch/poor reporting/reaction to same, and secondly a case of self-outed laziness and plagiarism by a guide book writer. I'm choosing here the more trivial topic for comment (indeed amongst the most trivial topics of which one could conceive) partly because the more important one has grown too large to deal with in fewer than several thousand words, and partly because much of the comment that has already appeared on the plagiarism question is so profoundly ill-informed it makes me want to gnash my teeth.

It's also appropriate to write on guide book plagiarism when I don't have time when the reason I don't have time is that I'm working on two guide books.

I believe the story may have begun with an interview given to the Melbourne Herald Sun by ex-Lonely Planet writer Thomas Kohnstamm. His purpose, apparently, was to gain advance publicity for an account of his misadventures working on various South American titles for LP, and tasters given included providing a good review to a restaurant following sex with a waitress, claims to have dealt drugs in order to supplement meagre fees from LP, failing even to visit one country he was paid to write about, and plagiarising or simply making up other information because LP wasn't paying enough. These, at least, were claims in the original story and in versions that appeared shortly afterwards in other media world-wide doing little more than rehash the original with comments from leaked LP internal memos, and later a public response from LP. There followed, inevitably, a lot of braying on the blogs of travellers (never 'tourists') and wannabe travel writers.

A very great deal of all this is utter humbug.

Firstly, there's nothing new under the sun, and most of all not in what passes for journalism today. This is far from the first time that an LP writer has been accused of plagiarism (although it may be the first time one has stood self-accused). Thinking only of my particular special interest, China, I seem to remember there was an issue involving one of the co-authors of the original LP China. Much of LP Beijing a few editions ago was clearly lifted and paraphrased by the author from an expat-produced (and now defunct) guide called The Beijing Guidebook, and I published an article about that at the time. I also recall one edition of LP's Pakistan guide about which many readers asserted the writer could not possibly have taken the trips since his descriptions were so wide of the mark. And in the 'nothing new' department it's also worth mentioning that it's only a few years since the last quick flash of articles about the world of the 'Shock! Horror! Probe! Guide book writers are so badly paid they don't do the work properly!' variety. People have very short memories.

Nor, of course, is Lonely Planet the only victim (although it has only itself to blame). As another guide book editor I know says, the first thing he does when he receives a submission is to start Googling sections of it. And it's not uncommon to find material simply pasted from web pages straight into submitted text. I know of three occasions on which my own work has been plagiarised, and in two cases I've found myself editing text clearly lifted from my own books. As I said to the company in question, as least I'm getting some income out of it as I'm being paid to edit it.

But no one surely needs to read an article about poor guide book research to suddenly discover Lonely Planet titles are fifth-rate. The statements by published media and bloggers alike that Lonely Planet's reputation is suddenly under threat had my jaw hitting the keyboard.

What reputation?

It's been a few years since I looked at a Lonely Planet guide but that's because of their obvious ignorance, cluelessness, and scant literacy. In the China titles there were not only howlers galore but self-confessed borrowing in the form of words of thanks to Fred or Joan who'd travelled the southern Taklamakan route, for instance, and whose notes the author had then used.

I've been told that Lonely Planet recruits a pool of writers (and you have in many cases to use the term 'writer' very loosely indeed) who then get assigned to various guides, rather than choosing specialists. Be that as it may, the mini-biographies of the contributors often go out of their way to stress the writer's complete lack of relevant experience. The biographies are the first place you should look when considering the purchase of a guide, especially for somewhere as complex and different as China. Reading those of many Lonely Planet contributors in the past it seemed the only quality required was that of being able to don a back-pack without falling over. From the text it was obvious that writing skills were not required, and since there was almost always no previous experience of China mentioned and no familiarity with the language, there was absolutely no chance right from the start that a work of any usefulness or intelligence would be produced even in the basic history and culture sections let alone hard research. Time after time LP books make only the vaguest gestures at useful directions or transport information. Time after time they say there's no public transport when there is. Time after time it's plain from the text that hearsay is being used. I once used to know one of the LP China authors who told me quite frankly that if he found he'd forgotten a phone number he'd just make it up. There wasn't time to go back and they weren't paying him enough to bother. And in effect, since he had not a word of Mandarin, he couldn't have used the telephone or printed references to find out even if he could have been bothered.

LP China, in addition to the edifying observation in its first edition that Chinese women must have the smallest breasts in the world, managed to go six editions with its history section stating that the Mongol Yuan dynasty was the only period when China was ruled by foreigners. What's more staggering: that the original writer could be so ignorant or that this could pass through the hands of six sets of editors (or the same editor six times) and still not be picked up?

The answer, to those of us who know the guide book industry, is that neither is terribly surprising at all. But Lonely Planet's reputation is only now in danger? Really? Has no one been paying any attention at all?

The single most important talent needed at a guide book company is the ability to select the right writer for the job. Only one or two I've ever spoken to (and I've worked for five of them, one of those under three different owners, and had discussions with three others) had the faintest idea of that. Very commonly once the decision is made to produce a title there's a scramble to find an author or authors in a very short space of time, and authors are hired on the most casual acquaintance and without any writing tests being undertaken or other hoops being jumped through. That something like this may have happened at Lonely Planet was acknowledged in a leaked internal memo from another LP author, quoted in several stories:

'"Why did you (management) not understand that when you hire a constant stream of new, unvetted people, pay them poorly and set them loose, that someone, somehow was going to screw you?" author Jeanne Oliver wrote.'

Many travel publishing companies are just factories, and if a writer is willing to get started right now, and do it for the pitiful sum on offer, then off they go. The main thing is to get the book done on time and get it on the shelves to start capitalising on an established brand name and make its production costs back. Accuracy is of no particular concern, and not even the most minimal fact-checking takes place. Note that Lonely Planet now claims to be fact-checking Kohnstamm's work in print. Isn't that a little late? The company has been claiming that Kohnstamm's methods are rare in guide book writing, but given the lack of any serious editing or fact-checking it's hardly in a position to know, is it? And implicit in this statement is a denial of earlier cases of the same thing, and the fact that taking short cuts is overtly acknowledged in some titles, and completely clear from the text of others.

Authors who insist on going over edits and checking maps become regarded as difficult, as happened to me at Frommer's, for instance. But then in most cases authors just sling crudely marked-up maps at editors and are happy not to look at them or anything else again. The editor is left to decipher everything, and it's no wonder that guide book maps tend to be so poor as a result. Both sides are to blame here.

I happen to think LP guides (unless they've improved very recently) are particularly poor, not least due to an almost anti-intellectual stance. But every series is in the situation described above: 'pay them poorly, set them loose' and of the five I've worked for only one pays a royalty--helping to keep the writer interested in the quality and sales of the title, and letting him retain the copyright. The rest pay flat fees for all rights for all media for all time and you're lucky if there's any author recognition at all. The quicker the work is done, the more of the fee you get to keep. The more diligent you are, the more you spend, and the less profit you make.

And that--diligence--is the quality guide book companies need to identify. As I've written here before, when I recruited writers to work on the first edition of Frommer's China, I looked for people who spoke the language, who had had periods of residence in China, and who seemed neither in love with the country nor hating it (both common), but engaged with it while being sceptical of it. If an author has had no residence in a country, and does not have at least a modest acquaintance with the local language, there is no chance of a realistic and well-informed portrayal of that country.

An attempt to gauge diligence was undertaken through long interviews and writing tests. The aim was to find people who cared desperately that what was going to appear under their names was accurate, and who understood how little information in China can be taken at face value. I think in three out of four cases I succeeded.

No previous experience with guide books was required--in fact it was regarded as a disadvantage. An ability to write came much further down the list. Naturally the ability to construct properly grammatical sentences was regarded as a minimum (it clearly isn't at Lonely Planet) but the ability to write in a bright and fresh manner was regarded as less important. For those who got the facts right the prose could always be polished a bit. Most guide book formats do not provide space for extended prose. As it was the problem turned out to be the technical one of writing in a sufficiently compressed style, and I had to spend a lot of time on editing it down. But bright, fresh, and often amusing, it turned out to be.

And I think several of the writers spent every penny of their fees on getting the research done. Then held down jobs or undertook other writing assignments to keep themselves fed while they composed the text. No cutting of corners here; no hearsay; just hard work. And there are other guide book authors like them.

But there are plenty more like Kronstamm, if simply lazy and ignorant rather than quite as self-professedly extravagant in their abuse. As I've edited others' contributions to several guide books I've often come across it. The author of the first editions of Frommer's Beijing and Shanghai guides had managed to spend some time in China and yet remain profoundly ignorant even of basic social courtesies and simple street names. The author of the Frommer's Hong Kong guide seemed to me to have only the most distant acquaintance with the destination when I was forced to look over some of her work, some really fundamental navigational information basic to getting round the territory being either wrong or missing altogether (not to mention the provision of tedious prose, bizarre observations such as dismissing a street for being full of Chinese shops, and the most uninspired and ill-informed selection of restaurants I've ever seen in a guide).

So shock and horror at the idea that LP guides might not be all that well researched is hogwash, as is Lonely Planet's position of fainting like a too tightly laced-up Victorian nanny at the mere suggestion. Many another series is just the same, and in the end it's the choice of author that matters, not the choice of brand (except insofar as certain kinds of information are needed--budget travel or cultural, for instance).

What else comes out of all this hoo-hah?

The absurd suggestion that LP writers don't accept free trips, and the equally absurd suggestion that to accept a free trip is to be corrupt. The copy in the front of every LP guide says that writers do not give good reviews in return for free access, not that they don't accept free access at all. If that little loophole wasn't left open it's hard to see how anything could be done at all, although it's also obvious from the text that LP writers do not eat in the best restaurants or stay at the best hotels being thereby forced to fudge their reviews, although this isn't difficult since those reviews are so brief anyway.

Larger guide book series appealing to deeper-pocketed readers rely on their reputations making sure that the writers get as much free travel, accommodation, entry, and meals as possible, and provide a letter for the writer to brandish. In Western Europe and North America this will go a very long way, and needs to, because it simply isn't financially viable to do it any other way. And there's nothing wrong with that so long as the writer doesn't allow himself to be bought. What's more of a challenge to honesty is the determination of some series (not LP in this case) to be relentlessly sunny, to the point where editors, who typically interfere in little else, will rewrite reviews to be more cheerful, or delete critical matter.

Guide books are in general as shoddy as they are not only because the wrong people are recruited and then paid too little, but because of various structural policies, that include:

Investing just about viable sums in producing the first issue of a guide, but then tiny sums in its updating

In some cases expecting only closed restaurants and hotels to be replaced, leading to ridiculously out-of-date selections in subsequent editions for fast-changing destinations such as China

In some cases being happy for the updating simply to be done from the desk, and only paying enough for that

Insisting on having every book for every destination work to the same formula with text being dropped in to a template, leading to silly distortions (since countries vary widely). This is partly done through ignorance of other cultures, and partly because using the template means the author is doing layout work and saving costs at the design end

Refusing to deal with non-Roman scripts because it's just too much bother although guide books to some countries are quite simply useless without them

Employing editors and sub-editors who are barely literate themselves (rare, but it happens), and rarely employing anyone who has been to China (for instance) on a guided tour, let alone having any deeper knowledge of the country.

So for heaven's sake, guide book readers: know from the start that what you're buying is more likely than not to be lazily put together and full of errors, and written by someone largely ignorant of their subject, with later errors added by equally ignorant editors. Look for biographical evidence of familiarity with the subject and long experience of it (but not too close--guide books written by people operating tour companies at the destination, as one Bradt guide I'm currently looking at, ought to be read with caution). Writers who've contributed to books on the Caribbean, Lesotho, the USA, and Cambodia should simply be avoided. Look over the text for signs of keen eyesight and sharp wits, and choose books with longer descriptions that force the writer to be expressive and informative--ignorance will tend to show up. Otherwise treat the writer as you would a film critic, and be prepared to learn over time whether you agree with his or her opinions. Learn principles of approach from your first encounters with your destination, and apply those when looking for accommodation rather than always picking from the list of choices given. It's just a guide.

The writers and wannabes currently screaming that the Kohnstamm revelations (good title for a spy thriller, although the comments attributed to him are about as revelatory as news that there's toast and coffee for breakfast) are damaging the reputation of travel writers in general should reflect that they have no reputations to lose, either. It's like becoming an estate agent, car mechanic, or lawyer: you may be as honest as can be, but you have to live with the fact that the reputation of your profession is not an attractive one.

Kohnstamm has turned out to be an unreliable source in every way. In more recent interviews he is back-pedalling, claiming he didn't invent or plagiarise after all.

Now that's a claim I really do find incredible.

Written in haste. For more on the vicissitudes of writing guides see this post:

Frommer's China

and this one Writing China guides.

Now to bed in the knowledge I'll have much catching up to do tomorrow.