Paulo Coelho embracing digital media

Author: Jonas Grashey

The bestseller author Paulo Coelho ("The Alchimist") gave his opening adress to the world's biggest book fair in Frankfurt. The Brazilian who spoke at the DLD Conference this year is one of the digital pioneers among the writers. He blogs and is part of several social networks.

In Frankfurt, he explained, why he is so keen in new media - he even published his books in the internet: "It's such a pleasure to do this. I'm not a person that socializes very well. I don't go to cocktail parties. I don't go to parties in general. I discovered this fantastic world behind the web that helps me a lot as far as a professional, as a writer." Coelho likes the stories he finds online. Altough he's not able to verify wheter they are true or not, he thinks that users with personas tell exciting stories as well.

For the open-source film-adaption of his book "The Witch of Portobello" he selected 15 out of 6.000 users who participated and created a movie. His online activities have a simple human reason: "At the very beginning it was to get information and then you feel owe something - you're getting but you're not giving."
Against advices he shows a lot of his private life on YouTube, uploading video-clips under the headline "Privacy Zero".

Asked if he was never worrying about his security he says: "John Lennon was killed before the internet."

Read the whole interview.

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Tags: dld-friends· dld08· Frankfurt book fair· paulo coelho