Coelho praises Web book versions at Frankfurt fair
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Distributing digital versions of books online for free can boost rather than damage traditional book sales, best-selling author Paulo Coelho said on Tuesday at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Coelho, the Brazilian author of "The Alchemist" and "Eleven Minutes," said publishers must exploit the opportunities provided by the Web rather than see it as the enemy.
Online bookselling is the most important development in publishing in the last 60 years, according to a survey by organizers of the world's biggest book fair.
Forty percent of the 1,000 industry professionals from more than 30 countries who responded to the survey believed e-content would overtake traditional book sales by 2018 -- although one third of respondents predicted this would never happen.
Coelho has been distributing digital versions of his books for free over the Internet for years -- a strategy he believes boosted his book sales in Russia, at least.
"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 told a news conference.
Coelho said his aim was to reach the maximum number of readers worldwide, participating in the democratization of ideas kicked off by Gutenberg, with his 15th-century printing technology, and taken to a new level by the Internet.
"The web ... is imposing a new way of sharing ideas and defying old economic models."
NAPSTER MEMORIES
What most publishers understand by digitization, though, has less to do with sharing and more to do with putting proprietary content online.
Gottfried Honnefelder, director of the German Publishers & Booksellers Association, said in his opening address at the fair that there was a need for more comprehensive 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.
Some fear that book publishers could suffer the same fate as the music industry, which shut down illegal file-sharing company Napster at the turn of the century but sat on the sidelines while Apple cornered the digital music market.
The literary equivalent of Apple's iPod, the e-reader, will be a hot topic at the book fair, with sales of portable electronic readers such as Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader growing fast.
Technology research firm iSuppli predicts that global ebook display revenue will grow to $291 million in 2012 from $3.5 million in 2007.
(Additional Reporting by Georgina Prodhan in London; Editing by Diana Abdallah)
