Paulo Coelho: Content Creators Will Be Punished For Not Sharing Their Ideas Freely

from the welcome-to-the-new-world dept

We've written a few times about best-selling author Paulo Coelho, and his embrace of file sharing and openness -- and how it helped him sell a lot more books. Reader Esahc writes in to alert us to the text from a speech Coelho gave. The actual speech appears to be from last year, so a bit out of date, but it's still well worth reading:

He talks about the success of his own projects, from "pirating" his own books, to having the community make their own movie out of one of his books. At the same time he discusses the rise of technology and the folly of pretending you can fight the technology. It's really a great overall statement on embracing new technologies for anyone who thinks they need to rely on copyright. On top of that, it again confirms the basic premise that we've stated here time and time again: for those who work to connect with their fans directly, there are plenty of ways to do well, even without specifically relying on copyright to do so.

We are facing a new era, so either we adapt or we die. However, I did not come here to share solutions, but my own experience as an author. Of course, I make a living out of my copyrights, but at this very moment I am not concentrating on this. I have to adapt myself. Not only by connecting more directly with my readers -- something unthinkable a few years ago -- but also by developing a new language, Internet-based, that will be the language of the future: direct, simple, without being superficial. Time will tell me how to recover the money I myself am investing alone in my social communities. But I am investing in something for which every single writer in the world would be grateful: to have his texts read by a maximum of people.

The Internet has taught me this: don't be afraid of sharing your ideas. Don't be afraid of engaging others to voice their ideas. And more importantly, don't presume who is and who is not a creator -- because we all are.

And the key point he makes? In the past, heretics were punished for sharing their ideas. These days, you'll be punished if you don't share your ideas.

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Follow Up On Paulo Coelho Embracing Pirating His Own Books

from the seems-to-be-working dept

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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Best Selling Author Actively Pirating His Own Book -- Finds It Helps Sales Tremendously

from the the-benefits-of-free dept

We've been seeing more and more examples lately of content creators recognizing how they benefit from giving away their content for free. What's most amusing, however, is that every time we point out an example, people work extra hard explaining why that case is a special case. When we discussed less-well-known musicians giving away music, we were told that it would never work for megastars. When we discussed megastars giving away music, we were told it would never work for indie musicians. The same is true in other areas as well. When we recently wrote about an author giving his book away for free, someone angrily emailed to let us know that this only made sense because no one had ever heard of that author -- so it was purely a promotional effort by a new author.

Yet, apparently, it also works for well-known authors. TorrentFreak points us to the news that Paulo Coelho is such a fan of giving his book away for free that he's even set up his own blog called Pirate Coehlo where he points to where you can download various translations of his best selling book The Alchemist. Coelho explained all of this in a recent talk he gave:

Link: sevenload.com What Coelho quickly discovered was that the more his book was available for free, the more sales of the actual book increased. As an example, he cites the Russian translation of his book, where it went from only 1,000 sales to well over 100,000 in a period of two years, and has only continued to grow since then. It's yet another good example of someone embracing how giving away content for free can help them earn more money. And, it highlights (again) that, whether you're well known or a nobody, you can use these tactics to your advantage.

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