5 posts tagged “e-book”

August 4, 2008 10:08 AM

At MediaGuardian.co.uk

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2008/08/novelist_paul_coelho_finds_the.html

Paulo Coelho certainly has nothing against selling books. He has sold an astounding 100m copies of his novels, writes Jeff Jarvis.

But he also believes in giving them away. He is a pirate. Coelho discovered the power of free when a fan posted a Russian translation of one of his novels online and book sales there climbed from 3,000 to 100,000 to 1m in three years. "This happened in English, in Norwegian, in Japanese and Serbian," he said. "Now when the book is released in hard copy, the sales are spectacular."

So Coelho started linking to pirated versions of his books from his own website. But when he bragged about this at the Burda Digital Lifestyle Design conference in Munich last January, he got in trouble with his US publisher, HarperCollins, whose then head, Jane Friedman, called him.

Friedman had caught Coelho red-handed - one of the supposedly unauthorised versions he linked to had the author's own notes in it. "She said, 'Paulo, come on, don't shit me'." He was pirating himself. So they reached a compromise: each month, a different Coelho novel can be read for free in the publisher's online reader, which prevents making pirated copies. Meanwhile Coelho is off to new digital frontiers. He Twitters. He blogs and enjoys exploring a different kind of writing online. "I think your language for your blog is totally different from your language in the Guardian, right? So we have to adapt ourselves. I have a lot of fun doing this."

When I saw him in his Paris apartment, he had a small Flip video camera ready so he could join in online video conversations at Seesmic.com. His digitally savvy assistant, Paula Bracconot, suggested having his readers take pictures of themselves reading his books, which they would put on Flickr; hundreds responded immediately. He webcasts his events and 10,000 show up online.

For his next novel, The Winner is Alone, Coelho asked his readers to help explain the pull of fashion brands. And for his last novel, The Witch of Portobello, he asked readers to film parts of the story from any character's perspective. If the results are any good, he'll have an editor turn it into a movie, The Experimental Witch.

Coelho is the thoroughly modern author. But he still believes in print. For him, this isn't a matter of print v digital. It's a question of what comes when you add digital to print. What does it bring him? "It gives me a lot of joy," he said, "because writing is something you do alone." He recalled the night in 2006 when he read that he had become the second best-selling author in the world. He was bursting. "My God, my wife is sleeping. How can I share this news with anybody?" Now he can shout it from the mountaintop of his blog.

For Coelho, digital is about relationships. The internet always is - and he is revelling in the new connections it gives him with his readers. He loves to meet them face-to-face. He mentioned on his blog that he'd like to invite a few readers to a party in a remote town in Spain and he was shocked that they were willing to fly in from as far away as Japan. Now he regularly invites readers to his parties.

"What should I do next?" he asked me in Paris. I was flummoxed because he's doing so much. Then I suggested that the next time he's in a cafe and bored, he should send a message to his fans via Twitter and his blog and I'll just bet a few will be in the neighbourhood and will drop by to share a cup of coffee. For Coelho is not just an author to them now. He's a friend.

Jeff Jarvis is a journalism professor at the City University of New York and blogs at buzzmachine.com

 To visit Paulo Coelho's blog (up-dated daily), please click here.

The act of writing – the reader

“There are two types of writers: those who make you think and those who make you dream” says Brian Aldiss, who made me dream for such a long time with his science-fiction books. Thinking about his sentence and my work, I decided to write some columns on the subject. In principle I believe that every human being on this planet has at least one good story to tell his neighbor. What follows are my reflections on some important items in the process of creating a text.

The reader

Above all else, the writer has to be a good reader. The kind that sticks to academic texts and does not read what others write (and here I’m not just talking about books but also blogs, newspaper columns and so on) will never know his own qualities and defects.

So, before starting anything, look for people who are interested in sharing their experience through words. I’m not saying: “look for other writers". What I say is: find people with different skills, because writing is no different from any other activity that is done with enthusiasm.

Your allies will not necessarily be those that everyone looks on with admiration and says: “there’s nobody better”. It’s very much the opposite: it’s people who are not afraid of making mistakes, and yet they do make mistakes. That is why their work is not always recognized. But that’s the type of people who change the world, and after many a mistake they manage to get something right that will make all the difference in their community.

These are people who cannot sit around waiting for things to happen before they decide on the best way to narrate them: they decide as they act, even knowing that this can be very risky.

Living close to these people is important for writers, because they need to understand that before putting anything down on paper, they should be free enough to change direction as their imagination wanders. When a sentence comes to an end, the writer should tell himself: “while I was writing I traveled a long road. Now I can finish this paragraph in the full awareness that I have risked enough and given the best of myself.”

The best allies are those who don’t think like the others. That’s why, while you are looking for your companions (not always visible, because meetings between the reader and the writer are rare), trust your intuition and don’t pay any attention to others’ remarks. People always judge others using the model of their own limitations – and at times the opinion of the community is full of prejudices and fears.

Join those who have never said: “it’s finished, I have to stop here". Because just as winter is followed by spring, nothing comes to an end: after reaching your objective, you have to start again, always using all that you have learnt on the way.

Join those who sing, tell stories, enjoy life and have happiness in their eyes. Because happiness is contagious and always manages to keep people from being paralyzed by depression, loneliness and troubles.

And tell your story, even if it’s only for your family to read.

Paulo Coelho

http://www.warriorofthelight.com/

Paulo Coelho's profound new work, The Witch of Portobello for free! till March 14th (courtesy of Harper Collins)

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