| Paulo Coelho: 100 million sales and growing! |
I am sharing this story from David Kirkpatrick's Fast Forward blog at Fortune.com because I do not know how to link to it, and it is too important to ignore. I wish Fortune made it easy to link to their articles. Forget Radiohead. Brazilian author Paulo Coelho has been an apostle of free Internet distribution for years. He figures they sell more books this way. In 1999, best-selling author Paulo Coelho, who wrote The Alchemist, was failing in Russia. That year he sold only about 1,000 books, and his Russian publisher dropped him. But after he found another, Coelho took a radical step. On his own Web site, launched in 1996, he posted a digital Russian copy of The Alchemist. With no additional promotion, print sales picked up immediately. Within a year he sold 10,000 copies; the next year around 100,000. By 2002 he was selling a total of a million copies of multiple titles. Today, Coelho's sales in Russian are over 10 million and growing. "I'm convinced it was putting it up for free on the Internet that made the difference," he said in an interview at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos. Coelho, whose fiction explores universal themes of spiritual aspiration and brotherhood in unpretentious language, has been a star of the Forum for 11 years. (For an account of Davos 2008 see this column.) Before this year's Davos, both Coelho and I attended a wonderful conference in Munich called Digital, Life, Design. Onstage there he told the surprising story of his embrace of free Internet distribution. In Davos I sat down with him to learn more. Coelho explained why he thinks giving books away online leads to selling more copies in print: "It's very difficult to read a book on your computer. People start printing out their own copies. But if they like the book, after reading 30-40 pages they just go out and buy it." Intrigued by his growing sales in Russia, Coelho used the Bittorrent site - a favorite for illicit distribution of media - to seek out and download online translations of his books as well as audio versions. By 2006 he was hosting an entire sub-site he called The Pirate Coelho, with links to books in many languages. While he did not play up his own role, he did quietly include a link on his official site. "So you gather together all the stolen digital versions?" I asked him. "You say steal?" he replied. "No. I think it's a way of sharing." His agent, Monica Antunes, who joined in the interview, chimed in unashamedly, "We don't own the translation rights to all those editions." By last year Coelho's total print sales worldwide surpassed 100 million books. "Once we did the Pirate Coelho there was a significant boost," he says. For all this, he kept quiet with his many publishers in countries around the world. "Sharing" is typically not the word they use to describe such activities. Coelho says the publishers have periodically taken action to remove books from the Pirate Coelho. "They think it is against me. They don't know it is in my favor. They will know it after your article," he says. "Publishing is in a kind of Jurassic age," Coelho continues. "Publishers see free downloads as threatening the sales of the book. But this should make them rethink their entire business model." Now Coelho is a convert to the Internet way of doing things. His online e-mail newsletter, published since 2000, has 200,000 subscribers. In 2006 he started blogging. Last year he joined MySpace and Facebook to interact more actively with readers. "MySpace is an addiction," he says ruefully. He also makes available an extensive archive of rights-free photos on the Flickr photo-sharing site. None of Coelho's books has ever been made into a movie. But now he is using the Internet to let his readers make one for him, based on his latest book, The "Witch of Portobello." It tells the story of its protagonist from the point of view of multiple people who knew her at various times in her peripatetic life. Now Coelho and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) have created a competition, inviting anyone worldwide to submit a segment as they envision it. Coelho plans to knit together 15 winners and release the film. He spends about three hours online every day, interacting with readers who send him over 1,000 e-mails and messages daily. A fulltime staff of six helps manage his manifold Net activities, and the entire operation costs him $15,000 each month, which he pays out of his own pocket. "I don't understand why publishers don't understand that this new medium is not killing books," Coelho says. "I'm doing it mostly because the joy of a writer is to be read. But at the end of the day, you will sell more books." ==== I've been recommending that authors give away their books online now for several years. Indeed, that's why I started up the following to websites: All Books Free: http://www.allbooksfree.com (for novels, short stories, poems, and children's books) Free Books for All: http://www.freebooksforall.com (for nonfiction books) In a comment below, Paulo provide a link to his blog. Here is the live link so you can go there right away: http://www.paulocoelhoblog.com. Labels: bestsellers, bestselling book, Fast Forward, Fortune magazine, free books, free ebooks, Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist |
posted by John Kremer @
10:46 PM
10 comments |
John Kremer's Ten Million Eyeballs Internet Marketing Event
10 Comments:
Hello John
in the article, David share the Pirate Coelho site. It is in my blog
www.paulocoelhoblog.com
Be welcome to visit!
Warm regards
Paulo Coelho
Paulo . . .
Thanks for the addition. I'll put a link to your blog in the original post above.
I've admired your work for years. Been reading your columns in Ode magazine for a long time. And enjoy them. Always a must read in Ode.
John Kremer
Hi John,
For what it's worth, I started giving away my most recent book online, and since then I've seen my sales double. Hopefully the trend will continue!
Charles
hello!
I'm a big Paulo Coelho's fan and I don't know if you heard about his blog
http://www.paulocoelhoblog.com
I've started as a fan and now I'm collaborating with him and thought that you would like to enter his universe.
Check the blog.
if you want, or subscribe to his newsletter
http://www.warriorofthelight.com/engl/index.html
You'll see a community of warriors of light sharing ideas, dreams and most importantly following their personal legend.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
We need to forget what we think we are, so that we can really become what we are.
Have a nice day!
Aart
Hello John,
If possible, it would be great to know if he had the electronic copy of his book in pdf, html or something else.
And, was the whole book in one file, or was each chapter a separate file?
Many thanks for this great story.
Kind regards,
Susan Vollmer
Author of Legends, Leaders, Legacies
http://www.susanv.com
Susan . . . If you have a question on the details of Paulo's, ask him. The books I've seen were in PDF format, the most common format. Most books are given away as one PDF file, not separated by chapter.
But, again, if you want to know, check out Paulo's blog and ask him.
Above you said, "I am sharing this story from David Kirkpatrick's Fast Forward blog at Fortune.com because I do not know how to link to it..."
Did you get permission to reprint this from fortune.com before you posted it in its entirety. Isn't that copyright infringement?
Thanks for the info, John.
One concern I have is that on Paulo Choelho's site, he is only giving away the English language prologue of The Alchemist, while the Spanish and other languages has it in its entirety. If he believes in what he is saying, why doesn't he have the Alchemist available in full in English? Is he implying that his technique only works in non-English speaking countries?
In fact, the only book he has in full online for English speakers is a collection of 110 short stories. None of his other 11 books seem to be available.
Maybe I missed a link or something.
I was not able to find a way to share the article or point to it on Fortune.com. Fortune.com hasn't got the message that Forbes.com did get. Fortune is behind Forbes in website development, article content, and quality of investment advice. They might catch up sometime.
So I have posted the article without permission of the author, although Paulo approved.
As for Paulo's English titles, it does appear that he doesn't offer much in the way of downloads. Not sure why. Ask him.
Great site John
Always nice to see someone trying to help writers.
I have a few sites you might want to check out, one that I update every few days with the Bestsellers ; http://www.squidoo.com/Bestselling-Books-EBooks
There is also a Book Lovers Club i created you may want to stop by and add your books to the list ;
http://www.squidoo.com/groups/book_lovers_club
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