Alchemist Author Pirates His Own Books
Written by Smaran on January 24, 2008Paulo Coelho, the best-selling author of “The Alchemist”, is using BitTorrent and other filesharing networks as a way to promote his books. His publishers weren’t too keen on giving away free copies of his books, so he’s taken matters into his own hands.
Coelho’s view is that letting people swap digital copies of his books for free increases sales. In a keynote speech (embedded below) at the Digital, Life, Design conference in Munich he talked about how uploading the Russian translation of “The Alchemist” made his sales in Russia go from around 1,000 per year to 100,000, then a million and more. He said:
In 2001, I sold 10,000 hard copies. And everyone was puzzled. We came from zero, from 1000, to 10,000. And then the next year we were over 100,000. [...]
I thought that this is fantastic. You give to the reader the possibility of reading your books and choosing whether to buy it or not. [...]
So, I went to BitTorrent and I got all my pirate editions… And I created a site called The Pirate Coelho.
He’s convinced — and rightly so — that letting people download free copies of his books helps sales. For him the problem is getting around copyright laws that require him to get the permission of his translators if he wants to share copies of his books in other languages.
So is Coelho just seeding torrents of his books? That’s just the beginning. He took it one step further and, as quoted above, set up a Wordpress blog, Pirate Coelho, where he posts links to free copies of his books on filesharing networks, FTP sites, and so on. He says it had a direct impact on sales:
Believe it or not, the sales of the book increased a lot thanks to the Pirate Coelho site…
In his speech he talks about how the Internet is changing language and books, and how online “piracy” and BitTorrent have helped him not only be more widely read, but also sell more books! It’s a must watch.
Via P2P-Blog
Previously: Comcast’s BitTorrent Throttling Acceptable? Not Quite!
Next: Virus Threatened to Kill File-Sharers, Creator Arrested for Copyright Infringement
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good to see more and more ppl daring the step into the future, rather than clinging to the past.
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ok man right, Paulo is a smart man okay?
Haahahahahaha I will arrest you all too, I can persuade the FBI to send people to Guantanamo bay.
All I have to do is anonymously send one of your IPs, tell the FBI you sent me a terrorist threat and you wanna bomb america, and boom your gonna be tortured.
I win you assholes.
Soldiers this website support al-queda.
Get Them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
wow.. this anonymous cop guy has some real issues.
I’m going to buy the book.
This makes me want to pick it up at B&N more. Well played sir.
I think this is really great I love his books x3 plus hp’s got a commercial with him on it.
Now if only college textbooks could be picked up via bittorrent…
You see, all you have to do is to embrace the power of sharing. Just because some of use uses bittorent tech that doesn’t mean we don’t buy we just have to try it first before we’re sure that it’s worth the bucks.
And it’s obvious that “The Alchemist” is worth the bucks so cheers!
@Brazillian reader
So what if his writting sucks, (hanvent read any personally so I don’t know). Thats not the point. The point is that he’s selling his books by giving them away. We’re talking about economics, not content.
The “PIRATE COELHO” blog is NOT really Coelho’s site! It’s a fan who put download links of Coelho’s books. And he says that Coelho has nothing against him posting the books. Read the About page…
Does he really say that in the (too long) speech ?
One reason why this works especially well with books is that people still prefer reading paperbooks than sitting infront of a screen reading.
What I can’t believe is that publishers are so blinded by greed and their insistence on one-user/one-device one license that they can’t see how obvious the argument for sharing is.
Books have always been something to enjoy and share. Who hasn’t borrowed a book from a friend, really enjoyed it, and then gone out and bought other books by the same author? All of my personal favourite authors were discovered this way.
@34:
Try http://textbooktorrents.com for textbooks, and see the guide in post #12 for tips on scanning your own and helping the community :).
Nice. Especially since I’ve been preaching the same for quite some years now.
Very few people wants to read an entire book on a computer. If the book is good they’re going to buy it. Electronic distribution is a great means to get people to know about the book, and will only improve sales.
Electronic versions otoh is a great asset since it lets the reader quickly find a part of the book, which is much faster than searching through the book manually.
Therefore in my oppinion all printed books should be delivered with an electronic version, if they’re not already made available on the web, which would be ideal, both for the user and the seller.
Has been done before with success.
See here:
http://home4.inet.tele.dk/jensguld/Flint.htm
or go to http://www.baen.com, click on Free Library and then Prime Palaver #6.
There are statistics and numbers. Study them.
this guy could teach the riaa,mpaa a lesson.
Duh!!!!
http://img156.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jayftngy9.jpg
This won’t work once devices like the Sony Reader make it as enjoyable to read electronic copies as it is to read paper versions.
easy to do for movies and music if the dinosaur could think..
Simply include something that cant be digitalized and instantly purshasing a movie box will give you more then if you got it for free online, and that might be enough for most to buy movies again because of added “value” and not just a 10pence generic plastic disc in a cheap plastic cover..
Its called adapting me thinks
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