Best-Selling Author Turns Piracy into Profit
Written by Ernesto on May 12, 2008Paulo Coelho, author of books such as “The Alchemist” and “The Witch of Portobello”, sold over 100 million books last year. In part, he puts this success down to BitTorrent, as he saw a huge increase in sales when his books appeared on sites such as The Pirate Bay. We talked to Coelho to find out more about this remarkable story.
“Since the dawn of time, human beings have felt the need to share - from food to art. Sharing is part of the human condition. A person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone,” Coelho told TorrentFreak, explaining why he decided to share his books for free.
His urge to share received quite a lot of attention after Coelho started a weblog with the name Pirate Coelho a few months ago. His motivation? He wanted people to have the opportunity to ‘try’ his books for free, but he knew some of his publishers wouldn’t agree right away. So, he took matters into his own hands and put his own books onto BitTorrent, FTP sites and Rapidshare.
“There was a strong reaction when I mentioned the site at Digital Life Design, back in January 2008,” Coelho explains. “The blog was out there for a while, but it seems that nobody from the publishing world was paying attention to it. When I spoke about it, all eyes were aimed at the site. From that moment on, based on actual numbers, the publishers not only accepted it, but helped me.”
“Harper Collins, for example, decided to offer a new book of mine every month, for free reading.” This, together with the pirated copies worked out really well, and the book sales went up. “If you go to the New York Times Bestseller list, you’ll see that the Alchemist jumped to the #6, and the Witch of Portobello is in the extended list.”
BitTorrent is one of the filesharing networks Coelho uses to share his books. “I am using it now, while doing this interview,” he says, and he encourages other authors to follow his lead. “The ultimate goal of a writer is to be read. Money comes later.” This is of course easy to say for an author who has already sold millions of copies, but Coelho goes even further, and argues that ’sharing’ books will actually help upcoming authors to sell more books. It is a win-win situation.
“I do think that when a reader has the possibility to read some chapters, he or she can always decide to buy the book later,” Coelho says, indicating that it is not a lost sale. On the other hand, the Internet makes it easier for new authors to publish content, and get people to read their work. “Nowadays, people are being encouraged to write, and start blogs, the book industry already found a few new talents on Internet,” Coelho says.
When we asked Paulo about the difference between book piracy and the unauthorized copying of music and movies, he told us that it is difficult to compare, since it is easier to consume movies and music digitally. Most people still prefer to read a real book however, pirated ebooks are more often used to preview. This can always change in the future, but for now Coelho is not impressed by the ebook reading devices that are out there, and many of his readers seem to agree.
“A (real) book is easy to carry, easy to read anywhere. Reading a book on a monitor on the other hand is very tiresome, and it would be even more expensive to print (considering cartridge prices) than to buy a paperback,” he says. What the movie and music industry can learn from Coelho, however, is that availability is of the essence, and restrictions will only lead to reactance.
Coelho fully adopted all the possibilities the Internet offers, as he uses his weblog, Myspace, FaceBook, Flickr and even Twitter to interact with his readers. “I want to share everything I write, from my books to my blogs.”
He recently started a new experiment, as he encouraged his readers to make a movie based on one of his books. When “The Witch of Portobello” was released, Hollywood came rushing in with movie deals, but Coelho told his agent: “it is time to start a new adventure!”
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33 Responses
Great!
Eh?
This makes me want to start writing…
Awesome! i think hes amazing for letting you “try before you buy” his books. And having his fans create a movie out of his book is genius!
not surprising, bittorent is great for authors, the hard copy is always better than a screen
I think that’s great! I wish the RIAA and MPAA and these other organizations would realize that people still do buy the shit. I know A LOT of people who will download a anticipated CD but still go out and buy it just to support the artists for their work. This is because people don’t want to spend $15 on a CD they don’t like…they want to check it out first before making a decision.
Long live file sharing and down with greed!
I have to disagree with his comment about the state of eBook readers.
The iRex iLiad is an amazing eBook reader that exceeds paper books in all but three categories:
1) takes forever to start (~40 seconds)
2) page turns take a bit of time (up to a second — however, if you get used to the time it takes, you can hit next and just as you reach the end of the page and it changes right on time …)
3) it runs out of power (mind, it lasts roughly 15 hours … if you’re using it. lasts a bit longer if it is sitting idle most of the time.)
Beyond that, eInk is amazing. And it has a larger screen than most of its competitors, which is really nice. And it holds a tonne of books … never run out. And it is easier to hold and read than a lot of actually books.
Now, this is a man who practices what he preaches. That’s the sign of a real gentleman. He is not afraid to venture into the “unknown”. The greatest impediment to having an adventure into the mystery of life is “fear” itself.
Whereas, the “entertainment” industry–music and video–are afraid of the unknown mystery of the internet. Out of that “fear” they try to create more fear, and more fear…to the point of paranoia.
The internet, at this stage of human evolution, is the beginning into another stage in the evolution of human consciousness, and humanity. Think EXPANSIVENESS. Take that as people want it. Everything is a perception. Ponder about that. Food for thought.
The entertainment industry cannot seem to get out of the slumbering box of PROFIT$. That’s their main motivation. They actually don’t really care about the ARTISTS. They just care about increasing their Profit$. That’s their absolute “perception”.
Me am unhappy. Not like smart man’s words. Owww! Common sense makes Bizarro Glickman’s head hurt. Me go sue more pirates.
@ #7
i am with you, to a degree. For years, I used aportisDoc converter+reader for my palm. even though my Vx had only 8Mb total, I could usually get 10 books on it, it would take maybe 30 secs to load a book, but after that, scrolling a page was instant. not sure on battery life though. The only downside was it didn’t do pictures, which made parts of Free Culture hard to understand.
“Since the dawn of time, human beings have felt the need to share - from food to art. Sharing is part of the human condition. A person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone,”
what a powerful statement.. this will inevitably be a most famous quote for our time
I don’t know if that’s what he’s doing but sharing or giving away parts of a book or say, a few chapters seems like a good idea, as then one would be inclined to buy the book if he liked it and wanted to read the rest or find out what happens. It shows not a tight fisted selfish attitude but an easygoing generosity which is appealing. You can keep your witchcraft stories but we do need a good book occasionally, but in electronic form it should be much cheaper of course for two reasons. One, as an incentive not to copy it, and two, because it saves a lot on the printing process and costs nothing to distribute.
If we could get along amicably with the media content producers, rather than have an atmosphere of animosity, they too could continue their trades acceptably. They need to make amends for their actions before peace could be made, and that may well involve new leadership. Then if they ceased behaving as tyrants and bullies, treated their customers and artists with respect and fair dealing, reduced their product prices to fair levels, and made their catalogs available digitally instead of just a selected range, everyone would get along famously.
After all, isn’t it about your bottom line? Or is it more to do with pride and arrogance? Would you rather jack up prices sky high at the same time they are available free or pirated cheaply, and sell only a few copies to the wealthy whom money means little to? Or sell at a reasonable price and everyone buys loads of them? This option, which you don’t use, is the only one that can work and is far more profitable. People are not stupid and they know $40 for a CD is NOT due to production costs, but purely to ever increasing greed.
Not to be a troll or anything, but this was posted on this same very site a few months back. Some new stats have been brought up I guess.
“Paulo Coelho, author of books such as “The Alchemist” and “The Witch of Portobello”, sold over 100 million books last year.”
Really? 100 million in a year? Shurely shume mishtake.
It’s crap anyway.
Just shows average people’s miserable taste.
“it is time to start a new adventure!”
Great words!
i read the alchemist (real copy)
bad buzz.
3 points for effort
Mr. Coelho, could you please link me to that ftp??
This dude is spot on.
Ebooks are an inferior substitute in joint demand.
i.e. you want to check out the book, you figure its good…you want to read a hard copy.
Whereas MP3s and DIVX movies are a superior product compared to DVD disks and CD disks.
That’s the jinx of it.
I just hope he uploaded them in the right categories and without misleading names, or else I will say, “HEY Is that the full copy?” then end up finding out “HALF’S MISSING”. More people doing this and it’ll be hard to find full books available online. I disagree with what he’s doing, but then again I’m an evil person. then I have logic….. don’t quote me people, just rambling.
people who say MPAA and other such organizations should pay attention to real situations. well, they do and they know it (about piracy helping gain profit).
but they do chase pirates because of the “ethical” part from law(s) view of aspect, as well as they need to keep their jobs;)
it’s all about bureaucracy.
i used to work for local anti-piracy chain, and we still leeched crap for us own. they didn’t mind it (higher level). they do it themselves, it’s just about getting cash from country (tax payers).
cya! - pardon my english skills:)
Interesting article, in that one guy is smarter than the whole music industry.
LOL, didn’t used to like this guy, but he’s very smart.
In deed he’s right, people download a ebook mostly for preview. But music/movies, can’t be compared. Sales won’t grow for CD’s after MP3…
“Since the dawn of time, human beings have felt the need to share - from food to art. Sharing is part of the human condition. A person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone”
Now that’s what i call an artist, and an intelligent man. If only there were more like this man…
TLDR
im sure this is recycled? I heard about this…on torrent freak before
smart.
if you like the book you will buy it since a real book is better than a screen..
Of course real book is a better one because eyes won’t get tired that fast (your eyeballs can be locked on the letter).
magnuel,
thats so true and it makes perfect sense. I generally tell people this.
Its nothing to do with theft or any such bs. Its a fact that the more people know about something the more they tell their friends about it.
Its like free advertising to them.
However the stock holders and big people don’t like seeing lost sales and the fact is a free download looks like a loss in sales.
So they look at the major players and go “do something about it or i won’t give you money”
so they do…
e??!
just bought one of his books today…anyway good idea.
This author appears to be a thinker ahead of his time.
Paulo is just brilliant! His capability of seen the good on everything is what keep him in the top! I would like to be like him someday soon.
It’s much the same thing as traditional libraries. You can go to a library, choose some books, take them home and read them. For free. Duh.
I can definitely see Mr. Coelho’s love for humanity through what he does.
Yes, he will increase his sales by introducing more people to his works, but if you really think about it, placing his books online (check his own website out too!) in various languages in pdf format really does more than that… it lets people learn more about his theories regarding life and how it should be lived.
That’s what he’s doing for us…making sure his works are accessible to as many people as possible. A great majority of people can go access a computer and use it for an hour or two a day and read a part of the book and learn something knew. Even if it is in a third-world country and they only ever manage to read a couple of pages of one of his books, many people might actually employ his philosophy into their lives…and be better for it. It sure beats buying a book when a great part of your salary might go towards it!
Other authors say they want people to learn how to live better (take Rhonda Byrne, the author of “The Secret” for example), but they make their books far more expensive than any of Paulo Coelho’s novels. However, they make people pay to watch the video format of the book or pay for the book itself. You can only get around that with pirated copies of the book online, which I don’t think they’re too happy with.
Great work, Mr. Coelho!
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