Free International Edition: The Future of a Radical Price [Paperback]

Chris Anderson (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (July 7, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140131001X
• ISBN-13: 978-1401310011
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,868,473 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Freedom isn't free, June 2, 2011

By 

Dr. Bojan Tunguz (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Free International Edition: The Future of a Radical Price (Paperback)

The best things in life are free, or so the old saying goes. These days, however, it seems that more and more companies and retailers are trying to get us something for free, and it is becoming increasingly doubtful that all of those freebies are the best that life can offer. Nonetheless, all this free stuff has certainly contributed to making many aspects of our daily lives simpler and more convenient, especially when it comes to those parts of our lives that we spend in digital world.

The raise of free predates computers, and it has a venerable history in the annals of marketing. Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of the "Wired Magazine" and the author of insightful "Long tail," narrates the greatest highlights of the history giving products for free. He also explains the rationale behind how the prices get set in a free market, and the reason why in the absence of almost any production costs we can expect products to eventually end up free. The reason that there is a proliferation of free nowadays has everything to do with the fact that the cost of creating and moving bits of information around is essentially zero.

Anderson spends an entire chapter defending the free model against its many critics. He takes every common objection to free that has been heard in recent years and provides a cogent and well-informed refutation. How convincing his arguments are, however, may depend on your own attitude and point of view.

At the end of the book there is a list of fifty different business models where products or services are given out for free. This is a useful list for anyone considering a cutting-edge modern business, and for the rest of us it gives us an opportunity to take a look at what kinds of things can be obtained for free these days.

Overall, this is an interesting book that takes a look at modern economy form a very unique angle. Only the time will tell if the paradigms used in this analysis will survive the test of time or are they just the latest fad.

3.0 out of 5 stars An overstated case, June 6, 2011

By 

Sagar Jethani (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Free International Edition: The Future of a Radical Price (Paperback)

Chris Anderson is one of the most astute observers of the tech scene today. His previous book, "The Long Tail", adroitly explained the power of online distribution and how the absence of physical inventory requirements fundamentally alters the way we shop for products. His latest book, "Free: The Future of Radical Price" argues that an economy based on information and digital content will inevitably push costs to zero.

Anderson spends roughly half of the book describing the various meanings of the term 'free', and its chequered past. I could have done without the exposition, and found myself rushing to get to the meat of the book-- those places where Anderson describes different pricing schemes that incorporate elements of free products or services into their overall revenue model. Google, Netflix, and Facebook all receive due attention here, and Anderson is at his best when he describes the rising phenomenon of 'the reputation economy'.

I find Anderson's argument for the inevitability of free digital content somewhat overstated. While he acknowledges that 'free' pricing often amounts to little more than gimmickry, he seems quick to convince the reader that this is not the case with online goods and services. At least one of his examples-- Zecco, the online stock trading platform --recently abandoned its free trading system and has begun to charge for trades like every other platform, perhaps a tacit acknowledgement that free may not be all it is cracked up to be.

The heart of Anderson's argument is that falling processing, bandwidth, and storage costs for digital content are driving the marginal cost of delivering digital services to zero. Companies, therefore, are able to offer such products at effectively zero prices in order to capture that most elusive of goals: customer attention. This, however, ignores the economic idea that just because the cost of delivering a service is zero, one should not necessarily charge zero prices. Anderson argues that in a perfectly competitive world, if one actor does not reduce prices to match costs, it will be rendered obsolete by others who will do so to steal share. But do we live in a perfectly competitive society? Are there not still significant barriers to entry which prevent the lowest-priced entrant from stealing share from incumbent interests?

Anderson's work is, as always, a treat to read. I recommend this title, although I continue to have misgivings about the author's central argument.

4.0 out of 5 stars adeptly explains why and how Free works on the Internet, November 10, 2010

By 

Prabhu Ram "Prabhu Ram" (Bangalore, India) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Free International Edition: The Future of a Radical Price (Paperback)

I like reading Chris Anderson works and I have read his Long Tail. The book Free answered my curiosity on why software / intellectual economy needs to make free up their properties and make part of their selling products as Free. Chris quite clearly explains how Free can help maximizing the reach and how marketers are using and benefitting. At the end Chris Mentions on how different business models work in this new Free Economy. Not every much details with stats like the LongTail but a very good read for those who are curious on how ( and why ) Free works in the Internet Era.