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Free: The Future of a Radical Price
 
 
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Free: The Future of a Radical Price [Kindle Edition]

Chris Anderson (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (161 customer reviews) |
Digital List Price: $19.99 What's this?
Print List Price: $15.99
Kindle Price: $9.99 includes free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
You Save: $6.00 (38%)

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Hardcover, Bargain Price $10.80   -- --
Paperback $12.38   -- --
Audible Audio Edition, Unabridged $0.00

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In the digital marketplace, the most effective price is no price at all, argues Anderson (The Long Tail). He illustrates how savvy businesses are raking it in with indirect routes from product to revenue with such models as cross-subsidies (giving away a DVR to sell cable service) and freemiums (offering Flickr for free while selling the superior FlickrPro to serious users). New media models have allowed successes like Obama's campaign billboards on Xbox Live, Webkinz dolls and Radiohead's name-your-own-price experiment with its latest album. A generational and global shift is at play—those below 30 won't pay for information, knowing it will be available somewhere for free, and in China, piracy accounts for about 95% of music consumption—to the delight of artists and labels, who profit off free publicity through concerts and merchandising. Anderson provides a thorough overview of the history of pricing and commerce, the mental transaction costs that differentiate zero and any other price into two entirely different markets, the psychology of digital piracy and the open-source war between Microsoft and Linux. As in Anderson's previous book, the thought-provoking material is matched by a delivery that is nothing short of scintillating. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Although Chris Anderson puts forward an intriguing argument in this cheerful, optimistic book, many critics remained unconvinced. They praised his engaging writing style, his amusing examples and anecdotes, and his clear explanations of complicated concepts and technologies, but they still questioned his conclusions. In addition to Anderson's own admission that YouTube -- one of his chief examples -- has been a financial black hole for Google, reviewers cited their own examples of industries that seem to run counter to Free's generalizations, such as broadcast television's fiscal struggles in the face of premium cable's expansion. Though some trends seem to point in the direction of Free, the jury remains out for the present.
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Product Details

  • File Size: 942 KB
  • Print Length: 300 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1401322905
  • Publisher: Hyperion e-books (July 7, 2009)
  • Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B002DYJR4G
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,898 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
84 of 95 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I read the original WIRED magazine article written by Mr. Anderson that this book is based on back in February 2008; I've been anxiously awaiting this book... and I've just finished it.

First off, I've implemented a few "freebies" in the past year that I give away in my line of work; the question was whether it would pay off. It did. I offered something of value (to me, and I believe to my customer) and waited to see if interest in the free item would increase sales of a companion item. Sales were there.

So many people are attacking the book for various reasons, but for me the key question for rating this book was "Is the author's information accurate and can it hold up to real-world results?" The answer is Yes.

A lot of things in the book aren't relevant to me, but I've taken what I can from it (in addition to the original article) and made some changes in how I do business. (I'm a small business owner, not a corporate giant.)

You can agree or disagree with the book's overall theme, but my findings are that the book has a solid grasp on how any business that has any Internet-related sales or support must adapt. The author's argument about how costs are moving to zero for the "bits" world is dead-on.

I find it humorous that so many negative reviews of the book are simply about the price of the book (or the lack of price for some of the free versions). The book is about the concept of Free. Some people are seeing "Free" on the cover and whining that it has a price???

The book isn't light reading - it's got some complicated concepts that the reader must grasp, especially business owners. For that reason, I could never listen to an audio version - I've highlighted my text at various points that I want to come back to and consider how I might use the info with my work.

I give the book 5 stars - I enjoyed it, it gave me much to think about, and I didn't feel (when done) that I'd been ripped off... the value of the information contained in the book is worth much more to me than the $20 I paid.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Freeconomics August 19, 2009
Format:Hardcover
Because of the ongoing drop in the cost of bandwith, storage and computer processing power, which brings the cost of each of these digital age services to almost zero, "free" is becoming a more prevalent price with real power. For the business person and others wishing to profit from "free", the trick is to figure out how to sell services or products related to the free one. Author Chris Anderson, who also wrote Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More uses Google as one of his primary examples of how free functions in this new economy. Google provides free internet searches and makes money off the targeted ads and premium products. Music groups have gotten on board, and have let go of the idea that they muist rely on copyright protection, and have benefited handsomely by giving away their music and more than making up for it in concerts, premium versions of their music and band-related paraphernelia. Not all "free" providers have managed to "monetize" their offerings. Facebook and Twitter are two examples, although the latter is on the verge of attempting to do so.

The above successes have occured in what Anderson labels the "bits" world that relies on the electronic generation of information, but free can also work in what Anderson calls the "atoms" world, where products are things you can hold or services that you can experience. Telecommunications companies, for example, give you a free cell phone but make their money on usage and ring tones. Anderson provides a good number of examples in table form of both bits and atoms free.

For me, the most intriguing discussion centered on what Anderson calls "finding the scarcity among the abundance", which is where the money is to be made from free or to where the value migrates. I wish there had been more concrete examples because my impression is that those of us who are not necessarily gifted in the geek data and computer world might find this opportunity the best one to exploit. I also wonder if there are opportunities for free to occur in government, or is this phenomenon limited to the private sector?

In any case, the book is an interesting read and will open the reader's eyes to the reality of this new economic force.
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131 of 180 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
At the "radical price" of $0.00, which was offered for a limited time, it was worth flipping through the ebook, but $26.99 for the hardcover, with no discounting? I don't think so. The book reads like an energetic but not very trustworthy blog--breathless, careless, and shoddily researched and argued.

It's been widely discussed that Chris Anderson lifted passages straight out of Wikipedia without attribution; now that the credits have been added to the electronic text, it looks pretty silly to see the notoriously uneven online reference cited again and again. I guess it was too slow/too old-school (too expensive?) to bother to do the primary research we have come to expect in a book--or even in a decent high school paper. Again and again the text feels dashed off and sloppy. Just a few examples from Chapter 7, which starts off, "On February 3, 1975, Bill Gates, then 'General Partner, MicroSoft' wrote an 'Open Letter to Hobbyists...'" and says on the following page that "Microsoft, now without a hyphen, grew rich." What hyphen? Does he mean a capital s? There's a subhead, "The Penguin Attacks," that's incomprehensible to people who don't already know the history of free software he's supposed to be explaining; then another subhead, "Case Two," without a "Case One."

What is "free," anyway? A lot of it sounds like a variation on bait-and-switch: e.g., give away a free cell phone but charge activation and monthly fees; offer a free basic version of a product but charge for the "premium" edition people really want; give doctors free software for electronic health records in return for access to data on those doctors' patients (yikes). Chris Anderson applies a version of the model to himself: "So you can read a copy of this book online (abundant, commodity information) for free, but if you want me to fly to your city and prepare a custom talk on free as it is applies to your business, I'll be happy to, but you're going to have to pay me for my (scarce) time. I've got a lot of kids and college isn't getting any cheaper."

Sadly, based on the quality of the thinking in this (free) book, I can't recommend paying for any premium version. Let the buyer beware.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The pitfalls of free
The problem with this argument is that purely free products, especially on the Internet (meaning all for free, not pariing free with premium services), is that there is no brand... Read more
Published 8 days ago by K. P. Butler
Fantastic
This book is absolutely wonderful. Truly opens your mind about ways to market almost anything. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in marketing.
Published 1 month ago by F. Gomez
Very radical that it might be a bit extreme to be believed.
Why I read It
I read Anderson's previous book The Long Tail and liked it, plus the cover stood out. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Book Him Danno
Good introductory read but fails short on specifics
As many other reviewers have pointed out, it feels a little bit like a magazine article stretched to fit a book length, but I found it worthwhile nonetheless. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Daniel
How Economics changes with the Internet
The book makes for wonderful reading. It is written with a very practical basis, relevant examples from the industry that you can relate to. Read more
Published 4 months ago by V Sridhar
Extremely informative
I learned a lot about marketing from this book. I must say, I didn't finish it. I felt it could have been much shorter and without quite so many "history lesson's". Read more
Published 4 months ago by Adele M. Crouch
Interesting history, very informative
This was not exactly what I expected it to be, but I thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless. This is a look back at how "free" has played into so many markets over the years and where... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Eli
Very Worthwhile for Business Owners
I bought this book, and also downloaded the audiobook, which is Free.

This is the second book I've read by this author and I was pleased with both. Read more
Published 4 months ago by JJ Kirkpatrick
Very interesting and thought provoking
The book is excellent in that it breaks down and analyzes actual businesses and their business models. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Will
He's Done it! A Great Social, Psychological and Economic Review
The Free phenomenon has been long in the building, but it's still a surprise. I'm amazed that I can go to the Asahi Shinbum newspaper for the best online interactive kanji drill... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Charlotte A. Hu
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More About the Author

› Visit Amazon's Chris Anderson Page
Chris Anderson
I'm the editor of Wired Magazine and the author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More and FREE: The Future of a Radical Price.

I live in Berkeley, CA, with my wife and five children.

In my spare time, I have a hobby-gone-wrong in the form of an aerial robotics community I run called DIY Drones and a company I co-founded called 3D Robotics. We develop open source autopilots and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which some people find thrilling and others find worrying. You can make up your own mind: diydrones.com

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&quote;
On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because its so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other. &quote;
Highlighted by 269 Kindle users
&quote;
Abundant information wants to be free. Scarce information wants to be expensive. &quote;
Highlighted by 264 Kindle users
&quote;
In the atoms economy, which is to say most of the stuff around us, things tend to get more expensive over time. But in the bits economy, which is the online world, things get cheaper. The atoms economy is inflationary, while the bits economy is deflationary. &quote;
Highlighted by 228 Kindle users

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"Free" is not free 11 Nov 18, 2009
why is this selling for full price 3 Jul 30, 2009
Why isn't "Free" available on Kindle??? 6 Jul 22, 2009
Beware: Book contains plagiarism 6 Jul 22, 2009
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