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!

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…

if you like the book you will buy it since a real book is better than a screen..

im sure this is recycled? I heard about this…on torrent freak before

Now that’s what i call an artist, and an intelligent man. If only there were more like this man…

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:)

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.

bad buzz.

3 points for effort

Mr. Coelho, could you please link me to that ftp??

Great words!

Just shows average people’s miserable taste.

Really? 100 million in a year? Shurely shume mishtake.

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.

what a powerful statement.. this will inevitably be a most famous quote for our time

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.

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”.

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.

Long live file sharing and down with greed!