Product Description

What happens when advances in technology allow many things to be produced for more or less nothing? And what happens when those things are then made available to the consumer for free? In his groundbreaking new book, "The Long Tail" author Chris Anderson considers a brave new world where the old economic certainties are being undermined by a growing flood of free goods - newspapers, DVDs, T shirts, phones, even holiday flights. He explains why this has become possible - why new technologies, particularly the Internet, have caused production and distribution costs in many sectors to plummet to an extent unthinkable even a decade ago. He shows how the flexibility provided by the online world allows producers to trade ever more creatively, offering items for free to make real or perceived gains elsewhere. He pinpoints the winners and the losers in the Free universe. And he demonstrates the ways in which, as an increasing number of things become available for free, our decisions to make use of them will be determined by two resources far more valuable than money: the popular reputation of what is on offer and the time we have available for it. In the future, he argues, when we talk of the 'money economy' we will talk of the 'reputation economy' and the 'time economy' in the same breath, and our world will never be the same again.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2342 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-02
• Released on: 2009-06-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

About the Author
Chris Anderson is Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine, a position he took in 2001. Since then he has led the magazine to nine National Magazine Award nominations, winning the top prize for General Excellence in 2005, 2007 and 2009. AdAge magazine named him Editor of the Year in 2005. Previously he was at The Economist, Nature and Science magazines. He is the author of the internationally acclaimed The Long Tail, which was shortlisted for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2006 and won the Loeb Award for best business book in 2007. He lives in Northern California with his wife and five children.

Customer Reviews

Virtually free
The author of the book, Chris Anderson, has solid credentials. He is the editor of Wired while he has previously held posts at The Economist, Nature and Science magazines. He is the author of the widely acclaimed and best selling 'The Long Tail'and was the recipient of the Loeb award for best business book in 2007.

The two books, 'The Long Tail' and 'Free' bear a family resemblance in that they are both based on the argument that rapid technological innovation has led to a paradigm shift in business model, product marketing, and cost. But unlike 'The Long Tail', 'Free' lacks an elegant underlying explanation for why some of the new models work and others do not, consequently while 'Free' is interesting is not as compelling as its illustrious sibling.

'The Long Tail' provided an illuminating perspective on the success of internet companies such as Amazon, eBay and Google. These very different companies were all exploiting the internet's capacity to open up niche markets that their rivals with physical facilities, limited precisely by the lack of physical space, could not.

The author divides the idea of Free into four subcategories:cross-subsidies e.g give away the razor, sell the blade;advertising-supported services from radio and television to websites;freemium in which a small subset of users pay for a premium version, supporting a free version for the majority;and non-monetary markets in which participants motivated by non-financial considerations develop things like open-source software and Wikipedia.

Obviously at least the first two categories are old and the author readily acknowledges that. He argues that Free is not new but it is changing. What is different, he argues, is that Free can be more widely applied in the digital era. He argues that while last century's Free was a powerful marketing method, this century's Free is an entirely new economic model.

Beyond the old-fashioned cross-subsidies and free samples, some companies have found new ways to make Free work, but there are not many of them, and the sustainability of others is unclear.

The inability of the author to shed light as to which of these new models are likely to work and which are not is, in my judgement, a flaw in the book.

Good read, but where are his references?
Just finished this.

A good, interesting book, but very annoying that there are next to no references. It makes his arguments weaker as you can't verify his sources.

This is more of an academic gripe, and the book is very good aside from this.

Refreshing concept in the main, but unconvincing in parts
It is not under deliberation that everything should be free, but in today's competitive world more things can be and indeed are. Changing corporate dynamics and web 2.0 have given rise to new business models and in some cases made "zero pricing" to be a new business mantra, according to Chris Anderson, the author of this work.

He makes projections for a welcoming world where new technologies, particularly the Internet, have reduced production and distribution costs in many sectors to such an extent that free goods would be "freely" available. In essence, the concept of free is not new and Anderson is not suggesting that it is.

He writes that the concept could be split along four lines - cross-subsidies (e.g. a free cocktail recipe book accompanying premium Vodka), freemium (some users subsidising the usage of others), advertising supported services and non-monetary business models (e.g. open source software).

The author's arguments are fine, but only up to a certain point. The classic problem here is that the concept of free is broad and all encompassing and cannot be generalised as such. In an attempt to sound convincing, Anderson puts forward some 50-odd business models revolving around the concept. The reader is supposed to pick one that works best in his/her case. Paradoxically, such a detailed list itself suggests how difficult it is to employ and measure this concept.

Furthermore, I think the book lacks a credible explanation about why some of these models do not work and yet others do. Devoid of such an explanation, the narrative comes across as a bit bland. Anderson, who is the editor of Wired magazine, describes free as "both a familiar concept and a deeply mysterious one." But by leaving this mystery unsolved and concluding the book with a confession that free "has to be matched with paid", he disappoints of sorts. Nonetheless, the book is worth a read, provided it's for free!