From Publisher's Weekly:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/h...be-greedy.html
Quote:
At a standing room only session at the Frankfurt Book Fair, bestselling Brazilian author Paulo Coelho had a message for publishers: Embrace change. And, lower your e-book prices.
At the packed event, Coelho and fair director Jeurgen Boos talked about the future of the book business, with Coelho telling the audience that change could not be stopped.
"It is a lost case," Coelho said.
"Paulo, you're saying the war is lost?" Boos asked.
"I'm not saying the war is lost," Coelho replied "I'm saying we humans are still here because of our capacity of adapting ourselves. The war is not lost. It is the opposite. The war is won. Culture is now available all over the world. People can read."
Chief among Coelho's advice to the industry: embrace the lower prices digital enables. "The system believes that all pirates are not honest. They are not dishonest. They have a problem of accessing culture. I'm not here to defend piracy. But if you change the system of pricing books, that is one of the solutions."
He spoke of his own experience--lowering his e-book prices for a promotion--saying he ended up making the price differential in volume, ultimately netting more profit.
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Oh, dear.
No much chance Coelho will be invited to Chez Preston or Maison Child any time soon.
More at PW
About Coelho:
Quote:
As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded with "My dear, your father is an engineer. He's a logical, reasonable man with a very clear vision of the world. Do you actually know what it means to be a writer?"[2]
After researching, which was common for him since he was a policy debater when he was in high school, Coelho concluded that a writer "always wears glasses and never combs his hair" and has a "duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation," amongst other things.[2]
At 16, Coelho's introversion and opposition to following a traditional path led to his parents committing him to a mental institution from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20.[3][4] Coelho later remarked that "It wasn't that they wanted to hurt me, but they didn't know what to do... They did not do that to destroy me, they did that to save me."[5]
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http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Coelho