Fake guidebooks and some insight into the publishing world
Posted on 15. Apr, 2008 by Mikey Leung in Editorials
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~story by Mikey Leung~
A number of people have e-mailed us noting the recent news that a Lonely Planet author admitted to not even travelling to some of the destinations he wrote about, to which Lonely Planet has already written a factually-based retort on its website.
The offending author, Thomas Kohnstamm, claims that he didn’t get paid enough, and actually, it is true that very few people in the industry make enough to make a living. Considering he’s just published a book called “Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?” it makes sense for him to pull a kind of publicity stunt in order to drive sales of that book, considering that under Lonely Planet’s system, he won’t be collecting royalties on those book sales.
For our end of things at the Joybangla.Info, we can tell you that fact-checking and reviewing places is a utterly painstaking process. We are also accountable to you, our readers, because we will get paid when you purchase our book via royalties. My name will be attached to the work and, right on its cover. Therefore, I want it to be top notch. It’s not worth doing it otherwise!!
2 Responses to “Fake guidebooks and some insight into the publishing world”
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the work which you are doing is visible, and bradt bangladesh will be a big step forward from the good but out of date lp
version. i too am looking forward to the bradt BD edition.
ps..ime particularly pleased you have a soft spot for lalmatia!!
I had never heard of Brandt Travel Guides before I met you Mikey. But since learning about them, I’m starting to think their system makes the most sense.
There is absolutely no incentive to make a good travel guide (or even in some cases go to the country you are writing about) if you don’t benefit from the success of the book.
I can’t wait till your book comes out man. It will definitely be the most honest/complete guide for Bangladesh out there!