A brand new book is available online from this week, completely free of charge. Anyone who wants to is welcome to download it as a PDF file, without paying a penny. It will only go on sale in book stores from 21 July. The book in question is the Dutch translation of US author Chris Anderson's Free, The Future of a Radical Price. In his book, Chris Anderson demonstrates how companies can earn money by giving away products for free. The book's Dutch publisher Uitgeverij Nieuw Amsterdam is therefore putting this theory into practice. Martijn Aslander, who describes himself on his website as a "lifehacker, connector and resourcer", is one of the leading champions of Anderson's ideas in the Netherlands. Free can also be downloaded from Aslander's website. He explains why, in these times of economic crisis, a commercial publisher is prepared to give away a book for free over the Internet. "The idea is: why shouldn't you give something away for free if it costs you no effort and no expense whatsoever? People who really want the book will go out and buy it anyway. And there are plenty of these people around. Just take a look at the sales figures for books nowadays. Because a book is a whole different entity to a digital version of a book."
A brand new book is available online from this week, completely free of charge. Anyone who wants to is welcome to download it as a PDF file, without paying a penny. It will only go on sale in book stores from 21 July. The book in question is the Dutch translation of US author Chris Anderson's Free, The Future of a Radical Price.
In his book, Chris Anderson demonstrates how companies can earn money by giving away products for free. The book's Dutch publisher Uitgeverij Nieuw Amsterdam is therefore putting this theory into practice.
Martijn Aslander, who describes himself on his website as a "lifehacker, connector and resourcer", is one of the leading champions of Anderson's ideas in the Netherlands. Free can also be downloaded from Aslander's website. He explains why, in these times of economic crisis, a commercial publisher is prepared to give away a book for free over the Internet.
"The idea is: why shouldn't you give something away for free if it costs you no effort and no expense whatsoever? People who really want the book will go out and buy it anyway. And there are plenty of these people around. Just take a look at the sales figures for books nowadays. Because a book is a whole different entity to a digital version of a book."
Although I own no shares in any company mentioned on this blog, the book, or Wired Magazine (aside from my two startups mentioned above), I do speak for hire. I used to refuse money for speaking gigs, donating it to charity or sending it to my publisher in the form of book sales, but then my wife rightly asked how, exactly, she benefited from me spending most of my life on the road. So now I travel less (only half the time, as opposed to 80%) and usually get paid for it.
So the book is a flyer for his public speaking.
That's really innovative, Chris.
e.g.
The Long Tail: Revised: the four kinds of FREE
A few weeks ago, I posted a diagram grouping free business models into three categories: cross-subsidies (eg, razor-and-blades), three-party markets (ads) and "freemium" (what economists call "versioning"; in this case most people get the free version). But as I was writing through that chapter, I realized that wasn't quite right.
But this doesn't make it false.
