Modern guide books like to portray themselves as the definitive source of information on how holidaymakers can enjoy themselves in far-flung corners of the globe without damaging the environment or upsetting local people.

But in a warts-and-all account of how he came to write Lonely Planet's guide to Brazil, American writer Thomas Kohnstamm reveals a world where good reviews may be exchanged for sex or a free room for the night, and decisions on which restaurants to include are dependent on the whims of a hard-up author without time to check the details.

In Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?, Kohnstamm, 32, discloses that there was nothing lonely about his three years traveling through Latin America, working on a dozen different titles.

"The waitress suggests that I come back after she closes down the restaurant, around midnight," he writes. "We end up having sex in a chair and then on one of the tables in the back corner." That performance earned a guidebook entry describing the restaurant as "a pleasant surprise" where "the table service is friendly."

He also recounts how he shared his apartment with a Brazilian prostitute called Inara. Short of cash, he admitted selling ecstasy to pay his way.

Lonely Planet bosses are not amused.

Chief executive Judy Slatyer sent an email to her writers to condemn Kohnstamm. Her big concern is the assertion his advance payment was "barely enough to cover the air fare" and that many writers do not check facts in a bid to finish before they "run up credit card debt" and "burn out." She also noted: "We are now urgently reviewing all current books Thomas contributed to."

Still, Kohnstamm has support from fellow writers.

On the Lonely Planet web group, Jeanne Oliver, who wrote the guides to France and Croatia, said: "You know you are not paying enough money to authors to do the work you expect. You are begging authors to cut corners or to help finance the book out of their own pocket." THE DAILY TELEGRAPH