Fredrik Haren @ Kinokuniya

Alhamdulillah, a gratitude to Allah for the opportunity to participate a talk delivered by an International Author, Fredrik Haren at Kinokuniya, KLCC on 14th May 2010. Thanks to BACA@LRT for promoting this event for the programme in the month of May (i'm still upset for not joining April's event) and this is the third time of participating the event to promote that reading is a cool activity.. Thanks too to my friend, mza for accompanying me to go to this event. :)

The session began at 7pm and we came 10 minutes late. The chairs were full taken and we have to stand along this session. But it's ok as long as we can heard the sharing inspirational talk by this author. Honestly, i didn't know who he is. I heard for the first of his name from Baca@lrt page in facebook. Then, i think i have to know a little bit info about him first before i listen to his talk. I opened his website (click HERE) and i found his book exists in IIUM Library. I just read his book in general and i'm happy that i knew some info about him.


Fredrik Haren is a creative person. That was my first impression. He did what other people will not think about it. He tried to do something different. He used a different cover book which is look like The Bible as his book to become the bestseller book. I like the story where he put his Idea Book in Hotel's room. It's funny but it was really happened. And I think that he is the only author who dare to take a risk to put his book for free in any hotel's room, but after that his book was sold one book per day (100 books for 100 days). Awesome ! As I understood in the world of writer (even though i am not a writer) that writing will only take 10 percent of your success, the rest 90 percent is the power of marketing your book. That will make the author become a businessman at the same time..

Idea is the most important thing. You can't write without having an idea. The idea will come from Knowledge and Information. He actually want the reader to have the idea after he gave his idea. That's why he wrote at the back cover of his book '150 pages about ideas, 150 pages for your own ideas. One idea book'. He simply wrote short stories or quotations in his book, then leave the blank empty pages special for readers to make them express their idea. That was an excellent idea !

One more thing that I can share here from his talk is about Copyright. It can be copy right or copying right. As he mentioned, Chinese people are the one who best at the term of copying. They can easily copy from something to create a new thing, and they became the best inventor by copying from other inventions. But don't look at them, just look at ourselves. Are we never copy? Yes or No is your answer. There is no accurate answer, it's up to you. But what's wrong if we copy the right thing. Then we create the better thing than the thing that we copied. Just ask yourself, i will ask myself too.. :)


Anyway, i got something from attending his talk. He had his different creative way to write. Why not we can be different and creative as well ? Be different. And please appreciate our differences..


15 May 2010
HS Cafe, IIUM