Will Online Book Piracy Drive Authors to Stop Writing?
April 2nd, 2008Wired Campus - “An interview with Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With a Pearl Earring, in Monday’s Times of London suggests that digital book piracy may discourage authors from writing. Unless, that is, the publishing industry can come up with a different business model.”
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:08 pm
As I just commented at the original article:
Paulo Coelho, author of _The Alchemist_, has provided the perfect counterexample — and his comes from actual experience instead of alarmist guesswork. As explained in the Fortune magazine article at http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/01/technology/kirkpatrick_coehlo.fortune/index.htm Coelho found that after posting a free (originally pirated) Russian translation of _The Alchemist_ on his website (but doing no other marketing or promotion in Russia), Russian sales of _The Alchemist_ went from 1,000 copies in 1999 to 10,000 in 2000, 100,000 in 2001, and a million in 2002. He now quietly hosts an unofficial clearinghouse (the blog “Pirate Coelho”) for links to free versions of his work, including translations and audio readings — and his worldwide sales continue to rise.