Chris Anderson's Free: The Future of a Radical Price
Available July 7
The editor of Wired magazine, and the man who gave the world The Long Tail, turns his attention to the curious business of giving things away for nothing. Turns out it has a long and distinguished history going back to King Gillette handing out free razor blades in the early 1900s. But the main point of the book is about what's going on now. Newspapers and email and software are music are all free online, or close to it, but that doesn't mean those businesses are dying. Anderson explores the proposition that with the Internet exploding, and manufacturing costs plummeting, giving stuff away is the business model of the future. Though note that he's selling Free the old fashioned way, for money.
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