Paulo Coelho the pirate
Best-selling author Paulo Coelho was http://www.dld-conference.com/:“Digital, Life, Design” shindig last week (apparently Europe’s answer to http://ted.com:“TED”). He told the audience that he has been putting his books online free of charge for years, in secret. He apparently needed (and obtained) permission from his translators to do this.
El Pais newspaper quotes him as saying that this stimulates book sales: that sales of The Alchemist in Russia topped 100,000 copies as a result.
Video of Coelho’s talk at DLD (apparently 2 hours long, including David Silverman, Carolyn Porco, Oliviero Toscani).
He posts his books online at http://piratecoelho.wordpress.com/:“Pirate Coelho”.
More information:
English: P2P Blog, Jeff Jarvis at The Guardian
Spanish: Ikusimakusi, Barrapunto
Full disclosure: I have never read anything by Coelho and I’m not sure I want to.
