Novelist Paulo Coelho has sold millions of books, including the all time bestseller “The Alchemist” that sold more than 65 million copies worldwide. It is less known that he is also an avid BitTorrent user and that he admitted to pirating his own books.
Coelho believes that file-sharing is a good thing that can be used as a means of promotion for writers like himself. To put his money where his mouth is, he volunteered to support The Pirate Bay when they were up for trial. So, where the prosecution had to beg for support from artists, The Pirate Bay is backed by one of the greatest novelists.
“I am openly supporting their site. I even volunteered to travel to Sweden to discuss the case of open contents, but I never got a reply from them,” Coelho told TorrentFreak. It is a shame that his email went unnoticed, because it could’ve been of great help. Coelho believes that sharing is in people’s nature, and that it’s not something that has to be stopped by law.
“Since the dawn of time, human beings have felt the need to share – from food to art. Sharing is part of the human condition. A person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone,” Coelho told TorrentFreak in an earlier interview, explaining why he decided to share his books on sites such as The Pirate Bay.
Publishing his books on The Pirate Bay worked out really well for Coelho. He actually sold tens of thousands of extra books because he shared them on BitTorrent. “I do think that when a reader has the possibility to read some chapters, he or she can always decide to buy the book later,” Coelho said, and he is not alone in that assessment.
