Arguably one of the most influential modern day philosophers, Paulo Coelho was born in 1947, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he was raised, and where he attended a Jesuit school.
An
interesting teenager story of Paulo Coelho goes that he told his mother
that he wanted to become a writer. His mother's response was "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?". At the age of 17, 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.
Infact,
at his parents' wishes, Coelho even enrolled in law school and
abandoned his dream of becoming a writer. One year later, he dropped
out and lived life as a hippie, traveling through South America, North
Africa, Mexico, and Europe and becoming immersed in the drug culture of
the 1960s.In this context, the message in the Alchemist makes so much
more sense to me !
In
1986, Coelho walked the 500-plus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in
northwestern Spain, a turning point in his life. On the path, Coelho
had a spiritual awakening, which he described autobiographically in The
Pilgrimage.
In
1982 Coelho published his first book, Hell Archives, which failed to
make any kind of impact. In 1986 he contributed to the Practical Manual
of Vampirism, although he later tried to take it off the shelves since
he considered it "of bad quality." After making the pilgrimage to
Santiago de Compostela in 1986, Coelho wrote The Pilgrimage. The
following year, Coelho wrote The Alchemist and published it through a
small Brazilian publishing house who made an initial print run of 900
copies and decided not to reprint!
He
subsequently found a bigger publishing house, and with the publication
of his next book Brida. Meanwhile The Alchemist became a Brazilian
bestseller and went on to sell more than 30 million copies, becoming
one of the best-selling books in history. It has been translated into
more than 67 languages, winning the Guinness World Record for most
translated book by a living author !
Since
the publication of The Alchemist, Coelho has generally written one
novel every two years including By the River Piedra I Sat Down and
Wept, The Fifth Mountain, Veronika Decides to Die, The Devil and Miss
Prym, Eleven Minutes, Like the Flowing River, The Valkyries and The
Witch of Portobello. I was surprised to read that in total, Coelho has
published 26 books! Two of them -- The Pilgrimage and The Valkyries --
are autobiographical, while the majority of the rest are fictional,
although rooted in his life experiences.Others, like Maktub and The
Manual of the Warrior of Light, are collections of essays, newspaper
columns, or selected teachings. In total, Coelho has sold more than 100
million books in over 150 countries worldwide. Coelho also publishes
short stories for Ode Magazine.
What
is most interesting about Paulo Coelho is his view on File
Sharing. Paulo Coelho is a strong advocate of spreading his books
through peer-to-peer file sharing networks. A fan posted a Russian
translation of one of his novels online. Sales of his book jumped from
3,000 to one million in three years, with no additional promotion or
publicity from his publishers. Coelho took to pirating his own books
(!!!) on Pirate Coelho which provides free translations of many of his
books and was caught by the head of Harper Collins! He then managed to
reach a compromise with the publishers: each month a new novel can be
read for free on the publisher's website.
