Open Media Review

Author Pirating His Own Work to Promote It

Whatever you think of Paul Coelho and The Alchmeist, the fact that a best selling author has realized giving his work away enlarges his potential audience says something about the potential of these new distribution models and the power of open and free media.

There is no change to the licensing of the book, it is still a traditional copyright, but his intent in building a site called Pirate Coehlo is pretty clear. The publisher is undoubtedly protesting but once they realize the potential audience for Coehlo’s next book based on this sort of self promotion, they will no doubt change their tune. A prediction that is well supported by the author’s own assessment of the correlation between his self piracy and improved sales of the work.

One of my favorites quotes applies, from Scott Sigler on a panel I moderated last year on the subject of Creative Commons and copyright. “It’s gonna get ripped off. There’s nothing you can do about it, so how do you use that as an advertising vehicle?”

The story I would dearly like to see is the publisher for such a recognized author explicitly allowing such open and free sharing, backing either an informal open distribution or better yet something more rigorous, like Creative Commons.

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