Follow Up On Paulo Coelho Embracing Pirating His Own Books

from the seems-to-be-working dept

Wed, May 14th 2008 4:27am — Mike Masnick

Back in January, we wrote about how best selling author Paulo Coelho was happily pirating his own books via BitTorrent, noting just how much it was increasing sales. Since he couldn't initially convince publishers to go along with it, he set up a site that pretended it was from a fan giving away various translations of his book, even though it was really run by him. He admitted it in a speech in January that got his efforts a lot more attention. TorrentFreak has checked in with Coelho to see how things have gone since he admitted to pirating his own books. Not surprisingly, the increased attention has helped drive even more sales -- even though the attention was all about how people could get his books for free. Because of that, a couple of his books are back on the NY Times Bestseller list. It also resulted in his publisher, Harper Collins, being a bit more willing to embrace the experiment, putting a new Coelho book online each month. Of course, as we pointed out at the time, this was still a really crippled and annoying-to-read way of offering free books online, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

What may be even more interesting is that Coelho isn't sitting back and leaving things as is. He continues to experiment. For example, rather than selling the movie rights to one of his books, he's running an experiment to have fans make a movie out of the book, dividing up the work. Since the book involves multiple perspectives, each person is expected to choose one perspective and film it. Coelho and his team will then piece together the movie, awarding 3,000 euros to the best film segments, and also offering up 1,500 euros to whoever composes music to go with the film. This reminds me a bit of Jonahtan Lethem's experiments with making a story of his freely available to movie makers. Hopefully we'll be seeing more such creative endeavors going forward.

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Filed Under: books, movies, paulo coelho, piracy, publishing

10 Comments

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Crosbie Fitch (profile), 14 May 2008 @ 4:40am

Sigh
It's a pity there are so few people like Coehlo who actually have a clue.
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Alex Barbosa, 14 May 2008 @ 4:49am

Actually his name is...
The correct name of the author is Paulo Coelho, not Coehlo.
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Overcast, 14 May 2008 @ 6:39am

Well - some in media choose to toe the old line and/or be followers.

Then some are leaders - this guy is a good example of an innovator and a leader.

Kudos to him and I think I might just check out his books too.
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Migs de Villa, 14 May 2008 @ 6:44am

Amen
if only more people were open to innovation like him.
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pena, 14 May 2008 @ 6:47am

Paulo Coelho and the RIAA
Before being The Paulo Coelho, he was a very sucessfull songwriter and record producer in Brasil, with some hits considered classical brasilian pop as in his work with Raul Seixas. But the best part is that he was into the Management, he was in the higher staff in his record company at the time. One could wonder he could bring some light to RIAA, if he wants that.
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JP, 14 May 2008 @ 9:05am

RIAA
Not I he wants but if RIAA wants.
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JP, 14 May 2008 @ 9:05am

RIAA
Not if he wants but if RIAA wants.
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anne, 14 May 2008 @ 10:42am

Coelho Who?
I've actually never heard of this author, and I'm not all that impressed with Torrent downloading, but I'll go and buy one of his books from B&N, just to support this kind of creative, out-of-the-box thinking.
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Mike (profile), 14 May 2008 @ 12:15pm

Re: Actually his name is...
The correct name of the author is Paulo Coelho, not Coehlo.

Oops. Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out.
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Ed, 15 May 2008 @ 6:27am

An important point
In addition, Let me point it out.

It's not exclusively about $$$-profit-drivem mind as well.

Paulo had already wrote and sale so many books, that I think he is committed to make his books as accessible as possible. And, even for a best seller writer, some times, convince editors to put the books on the stores it's not a simple matter.
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