Coelho Sticks to Digital Books and File Sharing at Frankfurt Fair

A few months ago we reported about the famous Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho’s favourable view upon file sharing seen as a great opportunity for making your works known but also for boosting the sales.

On Tuesday, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the author recidivated with his opinions on the much controversial subject saying that publishers must exploit the opportunities offered by the Web rather than finding ways to fight it.

A survey conducted by organizers of the world's biggest book fair revealed that Online bookselling is the development with the greatest importance in publishing over the last six decades.

Allegedly, 40% of the 1,000 industry professionals from more than 30 countries who were subjected to the survey said e-content would surpass traditional book sales by 2018. On the other hand, one third of respondents didn’t think this would ever occur.

Gottfried Honnefelder, director of the German Publishers & Booksellers Association, pointed out in his opening address at the fair how necessary it has become a proper regulation of intellectual property rights on the Internet.

"The e-book is a big chance for the book market … Yet we have to decide on some requirements and basic conditions, because regulations, processes and business models often lag behind technical developments," he said.

Coelho has been using file sharing as ways of distributing digital versions of his books for free for quite some time now and this proved to be, at least in his case, a successful strategy in increasing his book sales.

"They read a few pages, and think, my God, it is so much easier to buy a book rather than read on this screen — so they go out and buy the book," he stated in a news conference.
"The web … is imposing a new way of sharing ideas and defying old economic models."

There aren’t few those who believe that book publishers may be affected the same way the music industry was by the growing number of books circulating on the file sharing networks.

According to technology research firm iSuppli, the global ebook display revenue will reach around $291 million in 2012 from $3.5 million in 2007.