Free: The Future of a Radical Price – Chris Anderson

Free: The Future of a Radical Price is Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson’s highly anticipated book from his highly publicised story which made many business’ rethink their business model.

In his New York Times bestseller, The Long Tail, Wired magazine’s editor in chief provided a glimpse of the business future that’s already here. And now, in Free, he does it again. As the cost of doing business online drops closer and closer to zero, giving things away is not just becoming an option–it’s inevitable. But if the product is free, where’s the revenue?

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In Free, Anderson breaks down the priceless economy into six broad categories, demonstrating how to make money in each:

• Freemium: Free Web software and services, and some content, to users of the basic version. (Think Flickr and the $25-a-year Flickr Pro.)
• Advertising: Free content, services, and software to an audience that advertisers will pay to reach.
• Cross-subsidies: Give away any product that entices customers to pay for something else. Example: It’s a free second-gen Wii! But only if you buy the deluxe version of Rock Band.
• Zero marginal cost: Anything that can be distributed without an appreciable cost to anyone, like online music.
• Labor exchange: Performing tasks to gain access to free sites and services.
• Gift economy: From Freecycle (free secondhand goods) to Wikipedia, money isn’t the only motivator.

In Free, Anderson uses the fundamentals of economics, a long view of the history of business, analysis of today’s rapidly changing landscape, and fascinating predictions to create a book that, like The Long Tail, will be essential reading in the years to come.

• In hardcover, The Long Tail had lengthy runs on the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Book Sense, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times bestseller lists, and has sold200,000 copies.
• Like The Long Tail, Free began as an article in Wired–in this case, as a controversial cover story. Anderson has also been discussing the book’s progress on his widely read blog thelongtail.com.
• As editor in chief of Wired and author of The Long Tail, Chris Anderson

Links and Further Reading

• Read Malcolm Gladwells review of Free in the New Yorker
• Watch Chris Anderson discuss Free

Read this book? – Leave a comment or review below.

Related Books:

1. The Failure of Free-Market Economics – Martin Feil
2. Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance in the Changing World of Work – Cathleen Benko, Molly Anderson
3. Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy – Joseph Stiglitz