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Perhaps you’ve heard of Paulo Coelho, the Brazilian author of The Alchemist. Perhaps you’ve heard of him because you downloaded one of his books from his own “Pirate Coelho” Web site, which he says is responsible for boosting his yearly Russian sales numbers from around 1,000 to 100,000. He contributes that dramatic increase to his Web site, where he offers downloadable copies of his books in several different languages. Once people got an idea of what his books were about, they went ahead and bought copy after copy.

It’s just another example of piracy’s role in media nowadays. I bought all the major Sleater-Kinney albums after downloading them a few years ago—shame they broke up.

Alchemist Author Pirates His Own Books [TorrentFreak]