My Current Favorites – [November 2024]: Books and Biographies of Paulo Coelho
You know I’ve been collecting limited edition books for a while now (2 years) and I have a modest collection of letterpress printed books from various fine press publishers (Suntup Press, The Limited Editions Club, Imprimerie Nationale). Like all collectors, I always keep an eye on upcoming books from a dozen or so publishers (fine presses) and this time, my heart skipped a beat when I saw that Lyra’s Books was releasing the first bibliophile edition of “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. It’s a book I’ve loved, so much so that I wrote a detailed review but I wasn’t sure about paying 175 pounds + 55 pounds for shipping, which comes to 277 euros for the standard edition (the numbered and lettered versions are around 800 euros and 2700 euros respectively). My annual beautiful books budget is around 600 euros, and this book alone represents almost half of that.
You can see the different versions here: the first two are Standard editions (you have a choice between two colors), the third is the Numbered edition, and the last one is the Lettered edition.
Here are a few illustrations shared by the publisher. Some are in color, others are in black and white.
The publisher also shares the creative process, so you can clearly see the changes between the initial idea and the final creation:
Between the announcement of the book’s release and the actual sale, almost a month passed, during which my heart wavered between “yes, I’ll buy it” and “no, I won’t buy it”. Is it an essential purchase? No. Is it a book I’ll read regularly? Yes, because I already do.
Biographies of Paulo Coelho
I’m going back and forth, changing my mind every morning when I spot at my francophone dentist in Istanbul a bookshelf filled with Paulo Coelho’s books. Even though I loved The Alchemist, I never thought about reading other books by him because I’m not interested. Reading The Alchemist, I clearly see that he’s not a great writer; his style is simplistic. But on my dentist’s bookshelf, there’s a title that catches my attention: “Conversations with Paulo Coelho” (Amazon link, Fnac link). I have to wait for JB at the dentist anyway, I’ve got 1h30 ahead of me, I read the whole book, and I really enjoyed it!
Paulo Coelho’s life is much less simple than his writing style. In this book written by Juan Arias Martínez, a Spanish writer, Juan Arias Martínez summarizes long conversations he had with Paulo at his home in Rio de Janeiro, facing Copacabana beach. Paulo Coelho reveals quite a few secrets, including his (former) association with a sect (worse than satanic), his kidnapping by a paramilitary group and the torture he endured, as well as his three stays in a psychiatric hospital, placed there by his parents…. However, the content comes from Paulo Coelho’s mouth, so even if he reveals embarrassing things, the narrative still belongs entirely to him.
Now that I’ve started exploring the author, I might as well dig deeper. So I read the official biography of Paulo Coelho, written by Brazil’s best biographer Fernando Morais: The Wizard: The Extraordinary Story of Paulo Coelho (Amazon link, Fnac link).
For 4 years, Morais stuck to Coelho like a shadow and interviewed about a hundred people who had known Coelho. Reading the latter’s will, Morais noticed a mention of a trunk to be destroyed after Coelho’s death. He asked him about it, and Coelho threw him a challenge: if Morais finds the man who tortured Paulo Coelho, he’ll get access to the trunk. Morais succeeds, sends proof to Coelho, and discovers that in the trunk are 40 years of Paulo Coelho’s diaries and audio recordings. Morais throws away the 200 pages he’d already written, pays a specialist to organize all the information clearly, and writes the biography.
In this book, we discover even more shocking realities about Paulo Coelho. He’s no longer a “victim” or a “repentant”; he’s a deeply selfish man, certainly a victim of life at one point, but very selfish at his core. He’ll stop at nothing to pursue success and money. He does “hit & run”, takes advantage of people and their vanity, and never hesitates to put his own interests above everyone else’s. He was part of a secret society and slipped satanic lyrics into Raul Seixas’s songs and had people perform cult rituals in his theater class. Now he’s part of another secret society (RAM) that has bizarre but kind initiation rites: his master is named Jean and sends him on trips here and there… The Alchemist makes sense, as it highlights the concept of the personal legend and how to achieve it. “When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve your dream,” is his mantra, because a deeply selfish person truly believes the universe revolves around them and does everything to help them. In reality, it was poets who first funded his “vanity press”, and now it’s WE, the readers, who are helping him fulfill his personal legend, i.e., having lots of money and power.
After the release of this book, which had a “boom” effect in Brazil (a country where literary critics hate Coelho), Morais no longer hears from Coelho. The latter no longer responds to his requests. Morais has to go to France, where Coelho lives half the year, to ask him why he hasn’t received a reply. Coelho doesn’t answer clearly, but later gives an interview to a Spanish newspaper saying that he was afraid of his own past, but it was better that all this came out now. Among these well-kept secrets, there’s an old book about vampires whose writing was handed to a certain Toninho Buda. Coelho didn’t write a single word but was credited as the main author of the book. Toninho thought his name would at least appear in the book, but he was only paid the equivalent of a meal and got zero mention. Later, referring to Toninho as a “slave” in his diary, Coelho brought him to Europe, paying him a pittance. Thanks to this biography, Toninho saw karma reward him with what he had always deserved: his book about vampires, and he also released a book about Raul Seixas.
(I hope you enjoy these gossip passages, because I’ve been digging around the internet in Brazilian and Spanish to summarize it all for you. You’re welcome).
Where does Coelho’s success come from?
Now, I really hesitate to buy a Coelho book and contribute to his wealth. But thinking about it, when Coelho trampled others to rise, it ended badly, so karma might have shown him that this wasn’t the way, and he was punished. His greed and thirst for power mean that despite his success, he’ll never be a happy man like you and me. His true success (starting with The Pilgrimage) was only linked to his perseverance and the times he didn’t trample anyone.
For his first book, “The Pilgrimage“, he did the promotion himself. Now, all authors do it, but back then, it was the publisher’s job, and authors were too lazy to do interviews. Coelho, on the other hand, was actively involved; he signed a lot of books, went to see booksellers to check sales numbers. He handed out flyers in front of theaters, and paid out of his own pocket for a PR whose job was to get his book mentioned on radio and TV shows, secure interviews, etc. That PR was paid decently, but most importantly, he got a commission based on book sales. Coelho mastered literary marketing ahead of its time. What was clever was that he would say in an interview that he was a magician and could summon rain. He also dressed like a Templar/magician. Another journalist, intrigued, wanted to test his powers, and indeed, during the interview, he managed to bring wind. Sales then skyrocketed. His book became a bestseller on its own, because literary critics didn’t talk about it at all; everyone thought it was a one-shot phenomenon. one shot.
Lesson 1: So, the lesson I take from this is that you absolutely must offer performance-based bonuses to motivate people. I buy leather from two suppliers. From one, I buy little, only when I need it, because they don’t do much communication, so nothing tempts me. From the other, I buy even when I don’t need it, because they never stop communicating about new arrivals. Why does the employee from the second supplier communicate more often than the first? Because she gets a percentage of the revenue!!! So of course, she puts in ten times more effort than the one from the first supplier.
Then, the contract signed with the first publisher of “The Pilgrimage” was very interesting because it accounted for inflation, renegotiations at each reprint, which gave Coelho a lot of flexibility. I don’t know if you can do that nowadays with publishers, but I find it very smart. You always have to think several steps ahead. Paulo Coelho was born into an ultra-wealthy family, and what I’ve noticed about the ultra-wealthy is that they are frugal and manage their money well; whereas the poor are far too generous and squander their meager savings at the slightest opportunity. Of course, you need to find a happy medium, but this explains why the rich get richer, and the poor… get poorer.
Lesson 2 : Always think several steps ahead
Even now, Coelho closely monitors his book sales, challenges his collaborators, asks publishers to change book prices, and switches publishers if they don’t distribute his books well. As I often tell aspiring entrepreneurs, being an entrepreneur is the hardest job in a company, because you need to know a little bit about every trade, not enough to be a specialist, but enough to at least create a winning strategy and hire the right people. When my entrepreneur friends come to me and say, “Anh, can you handle the marketing for my company? I don’t know anything about it,” I tell them that’s very serious; an entrepreneur must be able to learn on their own. When Elon Musk arrives somewhere, he spends several hours with each specialist, asking pointed questions to learn their craft in express mode.
Lesson 3 : Being an entrepreneur means knowing all the trades in the company
When his first publisher refused to publish “The Alchemist,” Coelho was able to easily find another publisher and also hand “The Pilgrimage” to the second publisher. Since literary critics missed the release of the bestseller “The Pilgrimage,” this time the release of “The Alchemist” just before the Christmas holidays made a “boom” effect. It was THE Christmas gift that year, and for many years to come.
It was the I Ching that advised Paulo Coelho. The I Ching is an ancient Chinese book that can provide answers. It is also a philosophical book that teaches anyone how to navigate life. It is my favorite book in the world (I’ve talked about it here) and when I learned that Paulo Coelho knew it and asked questions of the I Ching, his success no longer seemed mysterious to me. Anyone who truly understands the I Ching (Amazon link) will succeed in life, will know how to adapt to changes in society, like Coelho with pirated books or the arrival of the Internet. If there is one book to read, it’s this one.
One of the main messages of the I Ching is that there is an ideal moment for everything. If you miss that ideal moment, you’ll have to wait for the next one. Choosing the right moment is crucial. Many people around me see the universe sending them incredible opportunities, but when the opportunity arrives, “oh no I can’t, oh no I’m not ready, oh no oh no”. They don’t realize that unfortunately, opportunities like that don’t come around every four mornings, and sometimes you have to wait 12 years before a similar opportunity comes along. So if you don’t know when the opportunity will come, you have to be ready at all times: knowledge, health, mindset, money… READY.
By knowing ancient disciplines like sidereal astrology or the I Ching, we fortunately have a little help because these disciplines can give a fairly precise idea of the “ideal moment”. In my case, for example, I was able to calculate on my own that 2022 was my moment. So I said “yes” to everything, and eventually a big contract fell into my lap because I said “yes” to a tiny contract that I would never usually take. In Coelho’s case, he knew he absolutely had to publish the book BEFORE Christmas; it was tight. But publishing such a book in January probably wouldn’t have the same impact. This idea of “seizing the opportunity” and “being there at the right moment” were well explained in The Alchemist, I think. But I really want to highlight it in this article and here too.
If you have questions about this specific point, feel free to leave a comment. However, I can only calculate the “ideal moment” for JB and myself. I haven’t received the *gift* to see it for others.
Lesson 4: Read the I Ching. If you don’t understand it, always be ready in case an opportunity arises.
Paulo Coelho’s international literary agent is Monica Antunes. When Coelho wanted to fire her because she hadn’t signed anything in 4 years, she refused to say “I give up”. She refused to be fired, and at the next book fair (where publishers buy book rights), she landed her first 16 contracts. She’s now extremely wealthy because she didn’t accept giving up.
Paulo Coelho always wanted to translate his books and distribute them internationally. When I talk with my entrepreneur friends, their priority is also always to find a “scalable” idea; for example, for a restaurant, it would be creating a franchise; for a product, it would be going through MLM; for a website, it would be translation into xx languages… the idea is to reach and be there for billions of people, not just the folks in your village.
Anyway, after reading this biography (Amazon link, Fnac link), I thought it was even more interesting than The Alchemist hahaha because you see a concrete case of fulfilling one’s Personal Legend. There are sales figures, commission percentages, book distribution strategies, how to deal with piracy, business negotiations. It’s too much for the average reader, but when you’re curious, or an entrepreneur, or an aspiring writer, this level of detail is excellent!!! Mixed in are the political context of Brazil, the secret police, paranormal phenomena, cults, secret societies, initiation rites… it reads like a Dan Brown novel but better because it’s real!!
In the end, I’ve decided: I’m getting the Standard version of The Alchemist. I read it at the right time, i.e., when I needed it most, and it helped me a lot, so I’m going to buy this bibliophile edition. There are two colors to choose from, and I’m going with the Gold version. The book will be printed the old-fashioned way (letterpress) on 170gsm Fedrigoni Arena Rough paper, with 24 illustrated pages. The book is hand-bound and signed by illustrator Gary Gianni. The slipcase and marbled papers are handmade. The spine will be in buckram, thickened cotton. The book is limited to 500 copies. The remaining 75 copies will go on sale in a few days on the publisher’s website. Everyone will receive their copy in summer 2025. More info
After that, my collection will be almost complete (as collectors say), and I’ll be missing ONE specific book that I’m currently searching for on auction sites.
