Lonely Planet guidebook author says he made up parts

(CNN) - An author who wrote several books for the popular Lonely Planet series of guidebooks says he made up large sections and, in one case, did not visit the country he wrote about, an Australian newspaper reported Sunday.

Thomas Kohnstamm told the Sunday Telegraph that he worked on more than a dozen books for Lonely Planet, including its titles on Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean, Venezuela, Chile and South America.

He said he did not travel to Colombia because the book publisher did not pay him enough, the newspaper reported.  "I wrote the book in San Francisco," he is quoted as saying in the Telegraph. "I got the information from a chick I was dating – an intern in the Colombian Consulate."

The Lonely Planet series publishes 500 titles and employs 300 authors. It sells more than six million guides a year, the newspaper reported. The book's publisher Piers Pickard told the paper that an "urgent" review of books Kohnstamm authored did not find any inaccuracies.