The Alchemist special edition

The Alchemist special edition

The Alchemist is a beautiful book about magic, dreams, and the treasure we seek elsewhere and then find on our doorstep. — Madonna

I remember receiving a letter from the American publisher, HarperCollins, which said that ‘reading The Alchemist was like getting up at dawn and seeing the sun rise while the rest of the world still slept.’ — Paulo Coelho

Last year. just before Christmas, I saw a special 25th anniversary edition of The Pilgrimage, with a new forward by Paulo Coelho where he talked of sitting along the route and how many more pilgrims he saw than when he was at the spot when he walked El Camino de Santiago, a journey he describes in The Pilgrimage.

That is what I thought I saw last week, even though it clearly said, The Alchemist. It was only later, reflecting on why not a scallop shell on the front cover, did I realise my mistake.

I returned today, and asked could I change, Manuscript Found in Accra (which I can pick up any time), for the special limited edition of The Alchemist. They consented.

I am pleased I did. I mentioned seeing The Pilgrimage last year and asked they checked their stocks. Not a single copy in the entire book chain. I asked they check for The Alchemist. The result was the same, Nada.

Last year, Monetegrappa produced a special limited edition of The Alchemist pen to mark the centenary of Monetegrappa. There are only 1,987 of the pens, the year The Alchemist was published.

Very cold day in Farnham

Farnham Parish Church

prayer cards for Paulo and Annie

candles for Paulo and Annie

The Alchemist special edition

Unlike last week in Farnham, no snow, but still very cold.

On the way there the sun came out for a brief spell. I thought just like spring, only it’s winter, then I thought no, it is spring, only just like winter.

Around the church, I though it is not that cold, no wind. But I think it must have caught the sun for a while and been out of the wind. As it was very cold when I left the church.

Inside the church, it was not as cold as last week, and much lighter. I tried photographing the Easter paintings they have. I tried last week, but too dark. It is a pity they are not originals, and no information about them.

Two candles lit, one for Paulo Coelho whose new book Manuscript Found in Accra has been released in time for Easter and for my lovely Greek friend Annie. At least, unlike last week, there were other candles to light from, and so I did not end up putting out the flames. Strange, all the candles appeared to have bene lit before. Two prayer cards writ.

On leaving the church, now very cold.

Last week, I picked up Manuscript Found in Accra ahead of publication. I wondered, would they change it for a special limited edition of The Alchemist. I saw it last week, and was thinking it was the special limited edition of The Pilgrimage which I had seen before Christmas. Yes, they would change it. Was The Pilgrimage available. No. Both it seems are rare limited editions, and so very pleased I did go back and change.

Late lunch in The Barn. Very sorry to hear they are moving, as a lovely building, but no one ventures down the alley, even though it is in the centre of town.

On leaving The Barn, even colder. Bus waiting, no long wait at the bus stop.

Readers Rest

Readers Rest

A snowy climb up The Strait and Steep Hill, on my way down I popped in Readers Rest to say goodbye.

Readers Rest is a veritable rabbit warren of a bookshop. The type of bookshop it is a pleasure to visit, where the owner knows books. Not like Waterstone’s, a chain that sells books.

Speaking to the owner he said he has had a good 30 years, but was now losing money, cannot afford to pay the rates and has decided to call it a day. He will be closing in a couple of months. When I looked in a couple of weeks ago, he said people come in, browse, comment on what a lovely old bookshop, then walk out empty handed. Today he said, they are happy to pay three pounds for a cup of coffee, but begrudge a couple of pounds for a book.

As we were talking a customer walked in and found a book he liked. He said Readers Rest was a Lincoln landmark and he was sorry to hear from our conversation that it was closing.

It is a crying shame when shops like this close. It was not only the books, it had character, around the bookshop were quotes from books or on books.

I picked up his only two Paulo Coelho books, very sad, my last purchase from Readers Rest. Each has his distinctive pencilled price inside the front cover.

He commented The Alchemist, one of my purchases, was very popular. I said yes, Paulo Coelho a personal friend. I then told him of my experience of Waterstone’s when Aleph was published, an international best seller across Europe and yet in Waterstone’s they did not even know who the author was.

The Alchemist and Aleph on special offer

The Alchemist

The entire Paulo Coelho back catalogue, with the exception of The Alchemist, was made available earlier this year at download for 99 cents per e-book, but restricted to US only.

• Download Aleph for 99¢
• A book for the price of a song

The 10th anniversary edition of The Alchemist is available for download at $3.99. This is not restricted to US only.

If you receive an e-reader for Christmas and nothing to read, then download The Alchemist.

Still expensive for an e-book, but better than the usual price.

E-books are way over-priced. They are priced at what the market will bear and bear no resemblance to the actual cost of e-books which is close to zero. The manuscript is delivered to the publisher electronically, robots convert to the appropriate download format, the cost of the download platforms have been written off years ago. Contrast this with real books where there are real costs: printing, warehousing, distribution, retail.

At the e-book debate at the Guildford Book Festival the former head of digital marketing at HarperCollins said no matter how off the scale were their forecasts for e-books sales, these were far exceeded.

Calibre is a must for managing e-book libraries, stripping off DRM and converting between e-book formats.

If using a Kindle, be aware that Amazon can at any time without rhyme nor reason delete all your e-books. Keep the wifi turned off (saves battery too), download to computer, then transfer to Kindle via cable. Other reasons for not using a Kindle: a propriety format not an Open Source format for example ePub, Amazon dodge UK tax.

Aleph is available in The Works at £2.99. UK only.

The Works is a remainder bookshop chain, 99% rubbish but occasionally something worth having. The last two books of the trilogy by Carlos Ruiz Zafón set in Barcelona, The Angel’s Game and The Prisoner of Heaven are on offer, but not The Shadow of the Wind.

• Paulo Coelho calls on readers to pirate books

And do not forget audio book of The Way of the Bow is free!

Out next year, Manuscript Found in Accra.

The Pilgrimage 25th Anniversary Edition

The Pilgrimage 25th Anniversary Edition

I was not aware there was a special 25th anniversary edition of The Pilgrimage (2012) with a special introduction by Paulo Coelho until I spotted one on display in Waterstone’s in Farnham today on a cold winter afternoon.

Most people think The Alchemist was the first book written by Paulo Coelho. It wasn’t, the first was The Pilgrimage.

It was walking El Camino de Santiago that inspired Paulo Coelho to write The Alchemist.

Many of his early books have their origins somewhere along El Camino de Santiago.

When he walked El Camino de Santiago, it had fallen into disuse, maybe 400 pilgrims a year. Since publication of the Pilgrimage, the numbers have risen exponentially, with peaks in Holy Years, such that by 2005 there were 400 a day passing a bar on the halfway point.

El Camino de Santiago is medieval pilgrim’s route that runs along northern Spain. The destination is Santiago de Compostela where lies the remains of Apostle James the Greater, St James.

• The History of the Pilgrimage to Compostela
• Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela today
• El Camino de Santiago

Wintry afternoon in Farnham

coffee and Aleph

Now that the clocks have gone back and it gets dark and cold earlier, I decided I would set off for Farnham earlier than last week.

I stayed on the bus to the bus station. I saw a bus about to leave, hopped on and asked was this the xx:50 about to leave. No, said the driver, this is the 30 minutes past running late.

I like going to Farnham, as I always pick up a Paulo Coelho book, this time The Winner Stands Alone, hardback. Not that Farnham is not worth a visit in its own right as it is a very pleasant market town. But I decided not to wander around, do a bit of shopping, grab something to eat, then head back out.

Farnham has a very good Oxfam music cum record shop, very good staff, and always very busy, which I discovered a couple of weeks ago when I came in on the bus. It was from there I picked up a couple of films last week. This afternoon The Winner Stands Alone.

I looked in Waterstone’s. I was curious. They sell Amazon Kindle, but if you go to their website and click on e-books, it warns you they are epub format and cannot be read on a Kindle. It was confirmed this was correct, a historic legacy from when they sold Sony e-readers. Buy from Amazon. Bizarre.

Quick lunch in The Barn, then home.

In The Barn the lovely girl behind the bar saw I had The Winner Stands Alone. She said she had read The Alchemist. I told her it was nothing like The Alchemist, and let her have a look whilst I went shopping. I suggested she might like to try Aleph.

We were talking of publishers going the same way as the music industry, books nothing other than commodities churned out by global corporations, doing as much damage to literature as music industry has done to music. The latest, me-too, copycat best seller.

For some reason she mentioned Dracula. I said there had been excellent dramatisation recently by BBC Radio 4, and suggested she might like to read The Historian, a modern retelling of Dracula.

Bus was on time. I was in time with no wait to catch the next bus from Aldershot, but decided to pop into Aldershot. Possibly fortunate I did, as there was a lot of people at the bus stop for the next bus and the bus busy. I suspect the previous one had not run.

It had been cold all day. Now as the sun was dropping, it was turning colder.

Synchronicity: Around the time when I was in The Barn, Paulo Coelho posted a picture of coffee with Aleph. The Barn is one of the best places in Farnham for coffee.

World Book Night

A cantora Madonna, acredite, declarou ser "O Alquimista", do brasileiro Paulo Coelho, um dos seus livros prediletos

Rock Your Life - Rudolf Schenker

local authors at World Book Night at Guildford Library

Tonight is World Book Night, a million books are to be given away.

Twenty-five titles including: The Alchemist, Pride and Prejudice, The Player of Games, A Tale of Two Cities, Rebecca, Small Island, The Book Thief.

Sharing is what we do with books, it is part of our book reading culture: We lend them to our friends, we donate them to charity shops.

Margaret Atwood:

Books without readers are like musical scores without players. And unless people are introduced to the joys of reading, reading books will disappear. World Book Night allows passionate readers to share the books they adore. And it’s a gift … gifts make powerful statements.

There are though a few killjoys: What all those books being given away, look at all the lost sales.

The same criticism has been levied at bookcrossing, a great idea, shame about the crap website.

Neil Gaiman:

Anything that gets people reading, anything that gets people back into the habit of reading, anything that reminds people how much pleasure they can take in a book is a good thing.

I don’t see this as millions of lost sales for bookshops; I see it as, potentially and with luck, hundreds of thousands more customers for bookshops.

We hear the whining from the global music industry: People sharing music is destroying our business.

If people no longer visit bookshops, the bookshops have only themselves to blame, that and the greedy publishers offering heavily discounted books to chain stores to try and turn around a quick buck.

World Book Night is not just a national event. Guildford Library tonight is open until midnight to celebrate local authors. Authors who will be at Guildford Library include Irene Black. Sadly the whole point of World Book Night appears to have been missed, that of giving books away.

World Book Night is not just a national event. This year the UK has been joined by USA, Ireland and Germany. In Germany copies of Rock Your Life will be given away.

In total, across all participating countries, 2.5 million books will be given away.

Writers write to be read, musicians play to be heard.

Unless we share, how do we find new books, new music?

I am pleased to see three of the participating authors are personal friends.

- World Book Night: Stephen Fry joins million giveaway
- Nothing is as good at being a book as a book is
- Bookshops in Bassano del Grappa
- Steve Lawson on books, music, communication and sharing

Ten most read books in the world

Holy Bible

1 The Bible – 3.9 Billion Copies

The Bible comes in many versions and editions. The best known is The King James Bible, which last year celebrated 500 years.

2 Quotations from the Works of Mao Tse-tung – 820 Million Copies

3 Harry Potter – 400 Million Copies

This counts all the Harry Potter books by J K Rowling.

J K Rowling was recently listed as one of the 60 most influential Christians. The list included Canon Andrew White, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.

4 Lord of the Rings – 103 Million Copies

5 The Alchemist – 65 Million Copies

The Alchemist was published in 1987. To celebrate their centenary, Montegrappa on St Joseph’s Day launched The Alchemist pen, a collaboration between Monetegrapp and Paulo Coelho. A limited edition of 1,987 to mark when The Alchemist was published.

6 The Da Vinci Code – 57 Million Copies

The success of The Da Vinci Code has been followed by many me-too Da Vinci Code books.

7 Twilight – The Saga – 43 Million Copies

Sales driven by TV series.

8 Gone With the Wind – 33 Million Copies

Gone with the Wind, a Pulitzer Prize winner by Margaret Mitchell.

9 Think and Grow Rich – 30 Million Copies

Personal advice Napoleon Hill was inspired to write by a suggestion he received from the Scottish-American billionaire Andrew Carnegie.

10 Diary of Anne Frank – 27 Million Copies

The diary written by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

Montegrappa launch of The Alchemist press pack

Montegrappa The Alchemist press pack

Hard to believe, a couple of weeks have already passed by since my Japanese friends and I turned up at the launch of the Montegrappa The Alchemist pen in Bassano del Grappa on St Joseph’s Day (19 March 2012). The Alchemist pen a collaboration between Montegrappa and Paulo Coelho.

After the launch, we had a guided tour of the Montegrappa facility.

On leaving, I spotted a few press packs were available.

Could I have one please, I asked.

Are you a journalist?

Certainly not, I replied, but more people will read what I write.

One press pack was handed over.

We only had time to get back to our hotel, change, then back out to be picked up for a St Jopeph’s Day party at a medieval Venetian Castle, guests of Paulo Coelho. I never really looked at the press pack until much later.

• Moments, a diary with wonderful illustrations by Catalina Estrada and quotes from Paulo coelho.
• A Montegrappa pen! No, not The Alchemist, a Parola, but still a Montegrappa pen.
• An illustrated book on Montegrappa.
• A pouch with a Montegrappa 300 GB hard disk drive!

I regret I did not get a press pack for my Japanese friends but that would have been pushing my luck.

Reading the signs

man with a book by Paulo Coelho

man with The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Aleph and The Alchemist joint No 7 (in non fiction chart)

I was waiting for the shuttle between terminal buildings. I was feeling very sad as only a few hours before I was in Venice for a fleeting visit and it was there I bade a sad farewell to my Japanese friends, Ken, Yumi and Mio, with whom I had shared three wonderful days.

I was feeling particularly miserable as on the train to Venice Mio had made me two lovely origami figures to remember her by, and as I came in to land I noticed I had crushed them and now they were merely two crumpled pieces of paper.

I looked up, and I noticed the man in front of me had a bag within which was a book by Paulo Coelho.

I saw it as a good sign. It lifted my sadness.

I made, what most people would have thought was a strange request. I asked may I take a photo of him with the bag.

He said yes. He asked did it matter which way he was looking. I said no.

I was then curious which book he had and did he enjoy it.

It was The Alchemist, but with a new cover that I had not seen before.

He said he was enjoying it very much, that he had not before heard of Paulo Coelho. He was sufficiently impressed that he was going to buy his other books.

He had been on a trip to Geneva and was saving the last part of the book for the last leg of his flight.

Whilst in Geneva, he asked his colleagues had they heard of Paulo Coelho? Apparently none had.

I then explained my interest. That I had just returned from Bassano del Grappa where I had been at a party with Paulo Coelho and at launch of a pen by Montegrappa called The Alchemist.

I showed him a Monetegrappa pen, though I hasten to add, not from The Alchemist limited edition collection.

We then parted and went our separate ways.

I found a bookshop and too my surprise found Aleph was not only out in paperback but was at joint No 7 with The Alchemist. Strange though in non-fiction.

Synchronicity: I had just returned from at a launch of a pen, The Alchemist. Paulo Coelho lives in Geneva.