February 1, 2012

Paulo Coelho wants YOU to pirate his books!

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On January 28th international bestselling author Paulo Coelho announced on his blog that he was participating in a “new and interesting system to promote art” by giving away works of music, film and literature for free.

Here’s his full post, punctuation (or not) is original:

Promo Bay

by PAULO COELHO on JANUARY 28, 2012
The Pirate Bay starts today a new and interesting system to promote arts
Do you have a band? Are you an aspiring movie producer? A comedian? A cartoon artist?
They will replace the front page logo with a link to your work.
As soon as I learned about it, I decided to participate. Several of my books are there, and as I said in a previous post, My thoughts on SOPA, the physical sales of my books are growing since my readers post them in P2P sites.
Welcome to download my books for free and, if you enjoy them, buy a hard copy — the way we have to tell to the industry that greed leads to nowhere.Love
The Pirate Coelho

Coelho has now joined a very vocal minority of authors who support piracy. (For example, see Corey Doctorow‘s latest article about it.)

I’m not coming down on either side of this argument, no need to start a totally pointless flame war, but I am wondering. . . Has anyone ever purchased a book after reading it for free? It does seem counter-intuitive doesn’t it?  And a little scary for anyone who spends a great deal of time and money producing content. We can see Coelho’s point, though: it’s not as risky if everyone on the planet has already read your work ….

 

MobyLives