Alchemist Author Pirates His Own Books
Found on Torrent Freak on Thursday, 24 January 2008
Paulo Coelho, the best-selling author of "The Alchemist", is using BitTorrent and other filesharing networks as a way to promote his books. His publishers weren't too keen on giving away free copies of his books, so he’s taken matters into his own hands.
He's convinced - and rightly so - that letting people download free copies of his books helps sales. For him the problem is getting around copyright laws that require him to get the permission of his translators if he wants to share copies of his books in other languages.
In his speech he talks about how the Internet is changing language and books, and how online "piracy" and BitTorrent have helped him not only be more widely read, but also sell more books!
In the end, even his pusblishers made more money thanks to "piracy" (although I'm not sure if you can call it that anymore in this case).