Thomas Kohnstamm & the “Hell” of travel writing

In his new book, Thomas Kohnstamm notes that it would be much more lucrative to make caramel macchiatos than to be a travel writer.

I wish he’d chosen the barista route.

But he didn’t. He signed on with Lonely Planet, the guidebook series that many boomers rely on for foreign travel.

Now Kohnstamm has his own book, which was released today. It’s called “Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?”

In an interview, Kohnstamm said he intended the book as a humorous memoir. Apparently, it didn’t tickle everyone’s funny bone. Kohnstamm said he’s received death threats along with a host of inaccurate media coverage in the run-up to the book’s release.

The subtitle of the book gives a hint of where the story goes: “A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics & Professional Hedonism.” In it, he recounts his life as a travel writer who signed on to do a Brazil guidebook for Lonely Planet. As a newcomer to the profession, he underestimated the amount of work the profession demanded and ended up cutting corners, journalistically speaking. Some places were just too far to visit, so he relied on secondary sources to complete his book.

Somehow, in media reports, that transmogrified into plagiarism, which he emphatically denies.

He wasn’t particularly well-paid, which is another dirty little secret of the field and a complaint I’ve heard often, so he resorted to selling drugs on the road to make ends meet.

He drinks, he drugs, he sleeps around. All in all, not exactly a flattering self-portrait.

Not surprisingly, his book has created a stir among travel writers and with Lonely Planet and other guidebook publishers.

“I’m not trying to do a take-down on Lonely Planet or the value of guidebooks in general,” he said. “I almost always travel with a Lonely Planet.”

Instead, he added, “my story is primarily my experience in leaving 9-to-5 cubicle life and trying to deal with a lot of the tension in trading between stability and adventure.”

Lonely Planet now feels some of that tension. In an e-mail to me, Brice Gosnell, regional publisher of the Americas for Lonely Planet, said Kohnstamm’s Brazil book is out of print. But, he added: “We are concerned about the integrity of his recommendations, as he has clearly breached Lonely Planet’s policies, the terms of his contract and has misled his employer. We are already conducting a comprehensive review of all the current titles where he conducted in-destination research. This involves changes to publishing schedules and early updates, cross-checks with other authors who are in-region, desk research and of course, as necessary, supplementary location visits. If the review process indicates the information is compromised, we will take immediate action. However, early indications from the authors involved are that the information contained within these books is not compromised.”

Kohnstamm also contributed two stories to Lonely Planet’s syndicated travel article series, to which the Los Angeles Times subscribed in 2006. Two of his articles — one on Chilean Patagonia and one on Venezuela — appeared in the Travel section in 2006. Gosnell of Lonely Planet said checks of those stories found them to be accurate.

Don George, who edited the articles when he was global travel editor for Lonely Planet (he has since left the company), said Kohnstamm’s new book surprised him. Reached in Italy where he was on assignment, George expressed his dismay, noting that Kohnstamm was a writer who was held up to other writers by the company.

Kohnstamm swears he wasn’t trying to sully the profession, only to shine a light on how difficult it can be. He’s right about that. It’s not always the dream gig we think it is. “I didn’t always keep that balance [between pleasure and work],” he said. “I fell to one side or the other.”

Of the travel writers I work with on the staff of the Los Angeles Times and on a freelance basis, I know of none who drink themselves into oblivion, take drugs and engage in sex with the locals, especially in exchange for a listing that says the staff is friendly. You can’t. The work is just too consuming.

“It sounds like Thomas was treating the venture like an extended vacation and was disappointed when he found it was a professional commitment that involved very hard work,” Robert Landon, a guidebook author, said in an e-mail to me.

“It is indeed grueling work, and on certain books, once I’ve factored in costs and hours worked, the pay has barely exceeded minimum wage. On other books I have made a decent, middle-class salary, though still with the grueling workload.”

Kohnstamm doesn’t paint all travel writers as coke-snorting, Ritalin-taking sleaze hounds — just himself. But the danger in his book is that readers think he is the norm. He isn’t.

In my 32 years in journalism — including 13 in travel journalism — I’ve found that although travel writers may be human (they make mistakes and miss planes and lose notes and drop expensive cameras into the Grand Canyon or pay too much for dinner) they are honorable people who understand that they are telling readers how to spend their hard-earned money.

In the end, it’s about serving readers, which means that the reader, not the writer, must come first.

If Kohnstamm had worked in a Starbucks, he might have picked up a valuable lesson about serving someone other than himself before he embarked on his Brazil adventure.

It sounds as though he may be headed down that path now. He’s back in Seattle, working on a second book “about my decommissioning, my attempt to return to normal civilian life,” he said. “I have a dog now. I pay rent.”

Rover and rent. Nothing like reality to refocus your attention on the real world.

— Catharine Hamm, Los Angeles Times Travel Editor

[Book cover image courtesy of Three Rivers Press / Crown Publishing Group]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 5:54 pm by Catharine Hamm and is filed under Angry Traveler, Book Reviews, Latin America & Caribbean, News, Tips & Advice, Travel Q&A. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.