Paulo Coelho, well known author of The Alchemist, has taken a novel (ha ha) approach to the “Scarcity vs Scale” discussion. He’s created The Pirate Coelho, a jumping off point to a Box.net storage account with PDF’s of some of his books.
There’s a description of what and why on TorrentFreak and a video of Coelho talking about how the web has challenged traditional publishig.
The figures are hard to argue with:
“…how uploading the Russian translation of “The Alchemist” made his sales in Russia go from around 1,000 per year to 100,000, then a million and more…”
Interesting stuff. He looks good with a pirate eye patch, too 🙂
The idea of increasing sales by giving books away makes sense actually – the more people who enjoy the work, the more people you have recommending it.
It’s true. But at the same time, understandably hard for publishers with fairly traditional money-making models to come to terms with…