Pirate Coelho - a story about pirates and success

Martin Brinkmann
Jan 25, 2008
Updated • Dec 2, 2012
File Sharing, Internet
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The business, RIAA, MAFIA, MPAA wants you to believe that putting content on the Internet is affecting sales of that content in a bad way, that companies sell less books, videos, movies, audio CDs because of pirates who download the media from the Internet. The funny thing is that more and more stories emerge that contradict this statement, one of these is the story about Pirate Coelho.

Paul Coelho is a successful writer, he did write the Alchemist for example, a book that sold millions of copies. He was recently talking about this book and the distribution of the book in Russia. In its first year the book sold 1000 copies. That is not really much if you consider that Russia has a population way above 100 million. The book was also copied and distributed in Russia on the black market and Paul decided to publish the Russian version of his book on his website.

To his and his management's astonishment the book sold 10000 copies the next year, 100000 copies the following and over 1 million copies the year after up to over 10 million in 2008. He attributes this success to the free publication of his book on his website because marketing and distribution remained exactly as they have been before.


Link: sevenload.com

Since he discovered that his books sell better when he gives them away for free on the Internet he created his own WordPress blog called Pirate Coelho where he is offering download links for many of his books using various ways like emule and file hosts.

via Techdirt

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Comments

  1. aarthilal said on January 26, 2008 at 11:14 am
    Reply

    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:

    A responsible Warrior is one who has proved able to observe and to learn.

    (Manual of the Warrior of Light)

    Have a nice day!

    Aart

  2. gokudomatic said on January 25, 2008 at 9:02 am
    Reply

    if something is worth buying, you buy it.

    right. but to who will you pay it? Myself, I will only give my money to those who worth it, if their product/service interests me of course.

  3. Verdican said on January 25, 2008 at 5:40 am
    Reply

    @Dan: I totally agree. It’s a shame that the RIAA thinks that all pirates eat babies and that they shouldn’t be trusted. Hasn’t anyone learned anything from Radiohead’s In Rainbows album?

  4. dan said on January 25, 2008 at 2:23 am
    Reply

    Let’s face it folks – if something is worth buying, you buy it.

    I can bet 100% that those who pirate music, movies or software end up purchasing at least ONE of the things they pirate if it’s good enough.

    Lord knows I’ve purchased software and music that I’ve downloaded after finding it’s actually worth keeping.

    I only regret not having downloaded the music I’ve purchased an only listened to once.

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