When travelling, you may be somebody who slavishly follows guidebook recommendations, or you may prefer to simply take tips from the book and make your own discoveries.

Either way, the cheap-and-clean guesthouse highlighted may have changed hands, or the superb jungle trek leader may have moved on. At best, the information you read will be at least nine months old due to publishing schedules.

So, can you believe everything you read? Well, clearly not, as information-based books will start to be dated as soon as they are published.

The case of Lonely Planet writer Thomas Kohnstamm - who is reported to admit making up sections of the Colombia guide and never visited the country - takes us into a whole new area of misinformation.

Battle of the travel guides: pod or print?

Steve Keenan argues that there's a wealth of information online, while publisher Hilary Bradt backs the guidebooks

The latest in travel guidebooks

Will Hide and Jane Knight round up the latest guides that cater for specific travel needs or interests; plus the best of the online guides

BACKGROUND

• Guidebooks: RIP

• End of the guidebook?

• City guides in print and online

• Why guidebooks are here to stay

It's one thing recommending a back street bar in Bogota that may not be in existence by the time the next Colombia edition comes out in two years time.

It's quite another to to parade a friend's recommendation as fact and keep your fingers crossed.

But that's exactly what some guidebook writers do: they scour the internet and other guidebooks, then ring or email to check the place is still open and latest prices, then simply re-write the copy.

I've yet to meet any guidebook writer who never actually visited the country they are supposedly experts on - but the economics of guidebook writing are such that corners will be cut so that the author comes out at least in pocket.

A friend is currently writing a round-up guide (non-travel). His fee is £3,000, but it's a desk-based research job. He knows his subject so it should take less than a month to write.

Good money? Well, not when the editor's queries follow, extra research is requested and the proofs are read. Then the job takes seven weeks in total and the £3k advance isn't quite so attractive.

Guidebook authors are not paid hugely more. But the thing is - they have to travel, and as a rule, guidebook publishers don't pay expenses.

I remember one author several years ago being asked by Thomas Cook to write a mini guidebook to the Algarve for £2,500. The money was poor, so she spent only two weeks in Portugal, two weeks research back home and two weeks writing it up.

Another researching a book on Namibia offered a top slot recommendation in the hotels section in return for a a free stay in a suite. Guidebooks are not full of wilful fiction, but little money can mean little careful research.

Jeffrey White on the website Gadling, puts it thus: " I know writers who I know to call in favours, farm out their work, barter, happily receive comps and overall travel in a way that is, well, rather less than incognito."

The best writers are those that live in, or have lived in, the destination being covered. They spend many weeks or months in situ, have widespread contacts there and an inherent interest in their subject.

There are others who will only devote as much time as they deem economic. And there are still more who are happy to make a loss, writing off against tax a commission which at least brings them free hotels and other perks.

What about the publishers? They aren't stupid - as with newspapers and websites, there are those that are diligent, others that care less for original content or in verifying information.

Anecdote suggests that competition and cost-cutting in publihsing means that the situation is worsening. A family friend wrote a guidebook to Scotland and updated it for several years: she has now retired but was shocked to find several inaccuracies in the latest edition.

A few calls confirmed what she suspected - the young writer hired to update her work never visited the places in question, but had used websites or phone calls, failed to double check - and neither did the publishers.

I respect and trust the Bradt writers and find Rough Guides the most consistently reliable (and easy to read) of the mainstream publishers. That's not to mean I don't trust all the others. But I really don't believe everything I read.

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