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Free: The Future of a Radical Price Hardcover – July 7, 2009

by Chris Anderson (Author)

4.1 375 ratings

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The New York Times bestselling author heralds the future of business in Free.

In his revolutionary bestseller, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson demonstrated how the online marketplace creates niche markets, allowing products and consumers to connect in a way that has never been possible before. Now, in Free, he makes the compelling case that in many instances businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them. Far more than a promotional gimmick, Free is a business strategy that may well be essential to a company's survival.

The costs associated with the growing online economy are trending toward zero at an incredible rate. Never in the course of human history have the primary inputs to an industrial economy fallen in price so fast and for so long. Just think that in 1961, a single transistor cost $10; now Intel's latest chip has two billion transistors and sells for $300 (or 0.000015 cents per transistor--effectively too cheap to price). The traditional economics of scarcity just don't apply to bandwidth, processing power, and hard-drive storage.

Yet this is just one engine behind the new Free, a reality that goes beyond a marketing gimmick or a cross-subsidy. Anderson also points to the growth of the reputation economy; explains different models for unleashing the power of Free; and shows how to compete when your competitors are giving away what you're trying to sell.

In Free, Chris Anderson explores this radical idea for the new global economy and demonstrates how this revolutionary price can be harnessed for the benefit of consumers and businesses alike.

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.

About the Author

TED curator.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Hyperion
Publication date

July 7, 2009
Reading age

18 years and up
Dimensions

6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

1401322905
ISBN-13

978-1401322908
Lexile measure

1220L
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hyperion; First Edition (July 7, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1401322905
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1401322908
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1220L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.14 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #854,294 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #662 in Social Aspects of Technology
- #1,396 in Strategic Business Planning
- #2,083 in Systems & Planning

Customer Reviews:
4.1 375 ratings

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Paige Turner

I Got It Free, But It Is Worth Paying $9.99 For!

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2009

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Free is a well-written book by Chris Anderson, the editor of my favorite magazine, Wired. The style and tone of the book is much like the long articles in Wired magazine. If you like those long articles and are interested in pricing models of various businesses, you will like this book. If not, it may be too much detail. (Some have quibbled with his use of Wikipedia for research, to me, it fits in with his thesis that information wants to be free, and takes nothing from his work.)

Anderson's thesis is that "making money around free will be the future of business." In the digital world, marginal costs are near-zero, in contrast to the world of "atoms." As he states in his book, for many, especially the generation that has grown up with the internet, "the response is usually `And?' It seems self-evident to them." This was exactly my reaction. Nevertheless, the book was worth reading.

My favorite key points:

"Between 1980 and 1990, the world's population grew by more than 800 million. But by September 1990, without a single exception, the price of (various metals) had fallen, and in some cases had dropped through the floor." Great argument against all the commodity bulls.

The same "genius" that predicted commodity prices to go up also predicted famines of "unprecedented proportions." This looks ridiculous now, with the massive obesity epidemic. The author slyly notes this genius still received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award. Great point about how so-called experts are awful at making accurate predictions.

"Simon complained that, for some reason he could never comprehend, people were inclined to believe the worst about anything and everything; they were immune to contrary evidence just as if they'd been medically vaccinated against the force of fact." I often wonder about this myself. In a slow economy, we read all the doomsayers saying, "we're in a big hole." Yet we always come out of it in time.

More data for the scarcity crowd: "Today basic necessities such as clothing can be made so cheaply as to be essentially disposable." The author explains that in 1900 a man's T-shirt cost about $1 wholesale. Today, that same T-shirt still costs about $1 wholesale, but $1 today is worth about 1/25th of what $1 was worth 100 years ago. Transistors are even more amazing: in 1961, they cost $10, 2 years later $5, and now 0.000015 cents each.

The author discusses what I have called "The Encarta Complex:" the decline of the encyclopedia industry by Microsoft CD-ROMs, and subsequent total destruction by Wikipedia. In 1991, the market was a $1.2 billion industry. In 1993, Microsoft launched the Encarta CD, and by 1996, the market had shrunk in half to $600 million. In 2009, the market was effectively zero, as Microsoft stopped selling Encarta altogether, as Wikipedia was free.

So is all of industry doomed to failure, as all prices approach zero? How do businesses compete with the inevitable downward pressure on prices? Anderson answers: "But the short form is that it's easy to compete with free: simply offer something better or at least different from the free version. There is a reason why office workers walk past the free coffee in the kitchen to go out and spend $4 for a venti latte at Starbucks - the Starbucks coffee tastes better."

Because the dinosaurs like newspapers and telecom companies don't recognize this reality, and don't want to change, Anderson concludes: "Your voice mail inbox is full" is the death rattle of an industry stuck with a scarcity model in a world of capacity abundance.

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O. Halabieh

Making Free Work!

Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2013

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Below are key excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:

1- "The "free" part of freemium is simple, but the "premium" part is tricky. Every company and industry is different, and each business must figure out what its customers will pay for even as it uses Free to attract them in the first place. Although the book includes hundreds of examples of how successful firms found premiums to go with their frees, there are countless others. There is no silver bullet, no universal freemium model that can offer salvation to all. Making Free work is hard, which is why it's sometimes so scary."
2- "Those who understand the new Free will command tomorrow's markets and disrupt today's—indeed, they're already doing it. This book is about them and what they're teaching us. It is about the past and future of a radical price."

3- "Today the most interesting business models are in finding ways to make money around Free. Sooner or later every company is going to have to figure out how to use Free or compete with Free, one way or another. This book is about how to do that."

4- "Cross-subsidies can work in several different ways: Paid products subsidizing free products...Paying later subsidizing free now...Paying people subsidizing free people."

5- "Most transactions have an upside and a downside, but when something is FREE! we forget the downside. FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered a as immensely more valuable than it really is. Why? I think it's because humans are intrinsically afraid of loss. The real allure of FREE! is tied to this fear. There's no visible possibility of loss when we choose a FREE! item (it's free). But suppose we choose the item that's not free. Uh-oh, now there's a risk of having made a poor decision—^the possibility of loss. And so, given the choice, we for what is free."

6- "The lesson from Harris's experience is that in a digital marketplace, Free is almost always a choice. If you don't offer it explicitly, others will typically find a way to introduce it themselves. When the marginal cost of reproduction is zero, the barriers to Free are mostly psychological fear of breaking the law, a sense of fairness, an individual's calculation on the value of his or her time, perhaps a habit of paying or ignorance that a free version can be obtained. Sooner or later, most producers in the digital realm will find themselves competing with Free. Harris understood that and figured out how to do it better. With his survey, he looked into the mind of the of the pirate and saw a paying customer looking for a reason to come out."

7- "Commodity information (everybody gets the same version) /ants to be free. Customized information (you get something unique and meaningful to you) wants to be expensive."

8- "It's easy to see e why this is scary for the industries that are losing their pricing power. "De-monetization" is traumatic for those affected. But pull back and you can see that the value is not so much lost as redistributed in ways that aren't always measured in dollars and cents."

9- "In 1971, at the dawning of the Information Age, the social scientist Herbert Simon wrote: In an information-rich world, the wealth of information meat a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."

10- "There is nothing new about this—people have always been creating and contributing for free. We didn't call what they did "work" because it wasn't paid, but every time you give someone free advice or volunteer for something, you're doing something that in a different context could be somebody's job. Now the professionals and amateurs are suddenly in the same marketplace of attention, and these parallel worlds are now in competition. And there are a lot more amateurs than professionals."

11- "The idea that knockoffs can actually help the originals, especially ir the fashion business, isn't new. In economics, it's called the "piracy paradox," a term coined by law professors Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman. The paradox stems from the basic dilemma that underpins the economics of fashion: Consumers have to like this year's designs, but also quickly become dissatisfied with them so they'll buy next year's design. Unlike technology, say, apparel companies can't argue that next year's models are functionally functionally better—they just look different. So they need some other reason to get consumers to lose their infatuation with this year's model. The solution: widespread copying that turns an exclusive design into a mass-market commodity. The designer mystique is destroyed by cheap ubiquity, and discriminating consumers have to go in search of something exclusive and new."

12- "The lesson from fiction is that we can't really imagine plenty properly. Our brains are wired for scarcity; we are focused on the things we have enough of, from time to money. That's what gives us our drive. If we get what we're seeking, we tend to quickly discount it and find a new scarcity to pursue. We are motivated by what we don't have. not what we do have."

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Saurabh Sinha

Good book.

Reviewed in India on July 22, 2021

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A must read to understand the concept of free. In depth research by the author!

Krismanos

Free is priceless

Reviewed in Japan on September 1, 2018

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This book has shown me on how free can give a lot of benefit to me. As I am planning to write and publish a book, I would plan to give it for free, I guess. Big thanks to the Author. Cheers!

Oliver Völckers

Ganz neue Geschäftsmodelle

Reviewed in Germany on February 18, 2014

Verified Purchase

Das Internet hat die Geschäftsmodelle der Musikindustrie und der Medienwirtschaft auf den Kopf gestellt, die Bücher- und Filmbranche befindet sich noch im Umbruch. Wer mit Journalismus oder Software sein Geld verdient, muss sich umstellen. Chris Anderson beschäftigt sich in diesem Buch mit der Frage, mit welchen Waren und Dienstleistungen in Zukunft Geld verdient wird. Er bringt dazu brillante Einsichten und Vorschläge.

Der Autor argumentiert, dass durch den schnellen Informationsaustausch im Internet seit der Jahrtausendwende ein Überfluss an Daten entstanden ist. Der Wettbewerbsvorsprung früherer Zeiten schrumpft auf ein Minimum, alles wird nachgebaut, abgeschrieben, kopiert. Andererseits ergeben sich ganz neue Möglichkeiten zum Großverdiener. Physische Produkte und persönliche Dienstleistungen haben nach wie vor einen Wert, aber nur, wenn sie der weltweiten Konkurrenz standhalten. Wer sich darauf einstellt, kann gewinnen.

Anderson bringt als Beispiel Musiker in der Volksrepublik China, deren CDs ohne Erlaubnis von den Kunden vervielfältigt werden. Statt rumzujammern, was sie eh nicht ändern können, nutzen die Stars diesen Effekt, um ihre Popularität zu steigern und leben stattdessen von Live-Konzerten und Fanatikern. Das geht auch. Wie Linux und Wikipedia zeigen, ist es sogar möglich, aus komplett kostenlosen Inhalten ein Geschäft zu machen.

Große Konzerne leben auch von der Verbreitung unbezahlter Dienstleistungen. So konnte sich Microsoft etablieren, weil Kunden deren professionelle Office-Software für den privaten Gebrauch kopierten, auch in manchen Ländern waren die unautorisiertem Kopien vorherrschend. Indem so ein Standard geschaffen wurde, konnte Microsoft bei den zahlungsfähigen Kunden abkassieren. Auch Webbrowser und Suchmaschinen werden ohne Bezahlung genutzt. Apple verschenkt neuerdings Betriebssysteme und Office-Software und lebt von Verkauf der Hardware.

In seinem eigenen Unternehmen, das Anderson in seinem Nachfolgebuch "Makers" beschreibt, verkauft der Autor sogenannte Open Source Hardware, d.h. Geräte mitsamt Bauplänen, die jeder nachbauen darf. Trotzdem oder gerade deswegen ein gutes Geschäft mit über hundert Mitarbeitern.

Fazit: Wer in einer Branche arbeitet, die vom Internet umgewälzt wird, und das sind mittlerweile fast alle, ist gut beraten, mit Hilfe dieses Buchs das Geschäftsmodell in Frage zu stellen und zu aktualisieren.

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D. Plant

Paradigm shift

Reviewed in Australia on January 13, 2016

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This book was recommended to me by a mentor, specifically to consider sharing thought leadership material via social media. I found it really interesting and full of great examples

C

If you want to know the future of marketing...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 14, 2010

Verified Purchase

The marketing bullies wont like this book, because it tells them that they have to give things away for free. But, they're missing the point: there is method to the madness. A great, inspirational, easy read. Only catch: he doesn't quite practice what he preaches. The again, I've read his work online (for free) for years. So here is a way for me to repay his efforts. ;-)

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