This audiobook is a must listen for pretty much everyone who visits SFFaudio. It’s a fascinating history of the word and concepts of “FREE.” This is a word that affects you every day of your life. It’s a magic word, that creates fear, desire, curiosity, skepticism, love and hatred. If for no other reason listen for all the SFF genre mentions (though Anderson accidentally misnames one of Neil Gaiman’s books).
You’ll learn a ton by listening to this free book, I sure did! And, I bet if you listen to just 10 minutes you’ll have to listen to the whole thing.
In keeping with the recursive nature of the title, the UNABRIDGED audiobook version is FREE on Audible.com. It’s also available in a Zipped Folder for download from Wired magazine’s website |GET THE UNABRIDGED VERSION ZIPPED VERSION HERE|, from the publisher’s website (Hyperion Books) |HERE|. And it’s FREE in the Audiobook section of iTunes store too (that’s probably a first). Lastly it’s also available as an iTunes podcast too – do a search for it in iTunes (beware that the files are not ordered properly).
Free: The Future of a Radical Price
By Chris Anderson; Read by Chris Anderson
FREE Audible Download – Approx. 7 Hours 2 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Hyperion Audio
Published: July 2009
Provider: Audible.com
The New York Times best-selling author heralds the future of business in Free. In his revolutionary best seller, 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.
Oddly, (or perhaps not if you’ve heard the book) the ABRIDGED audiobook version is NOT FREE!
is available |HERE|. There’s also a podcast feed of the abridged version HERE.
Posted by Jesse Willis