I put this out on Twitter earlier, and there seemed to be a lot of interest, so I figured I’d publish it here as well. If you have a Kindle, head on over to Amazon to pick up Chris Anderson’s book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, for free. While the regular print edition will set you back $26.99, for whatever reason, the entire book is available for free right now in Kindle form.
Naturally, you have to have a Kindle to get it (it’s delivered over the Amazon Whispernet network to your device), but you can also grab it and read it on your iPhone or iPod touch if you have the Kindle app. Sure, there may have been a few plagiarism issues with the book recently (maybe that’s why we’re seeing it for free in digital form, with corrections), but it’s hard to argue with the price.
Again, find it here.
Update: And the free experiment has apparently paid off as the book will enter the NYT Bestseller list this week at #12, Anderson tweeted out earlier.
Update 2: Scribd has also had it available for free since last week. I’ll go ahead and embed the whole thing below for those of you without Kindles.
You can also download it as an audio book.
Thanks for that info Diego, im on itunes right now
Yeah, definitely going to try out Free. Nothing to lose unless your time is too precious. It’s free!
DRM, Region-locked, guy’s not only a plagiarist, but also a hypocrite.
Alexandre: You can download the audiobook version here: http://www.wire...currentPage=all
iai como vc ta??
good night!
The eBook is free in every eBook format. It’s just the dead tree version that you have to buy. That’s kind of the message of the book!
Had to laugh at your response. Good comment. Thanks for the giggle.
Yea, right,
Free as in ” Sorry, this content is geographically restricted ; Due to our agreements with our publishing partners, the document you requested is only available to users located in the United States. ”
I’m starting to feel geographically handicapped.
Looks like it is also free with the Kindle app on the iPhone =)
I received a copy at the Wired Disruptive By Design conference, and I read it in one setting, it is really a good book. Chris gives a defining perspective of the free to fee approach and it is good to see him leading by example.
As he says “take my book for free but if you would like to me to prepare a custom lecture for your organization, you must pay me due to my scarce time”.
Classic.
^ Of course his grammar is correct lol (Sorry Chris).
Free, but still DRM’ed. Hmph…
Am I alone in that I don’t want his book to be free. I’d rather he set an example of a fair price for the digital download.
Seems fair to buy his book or most other mass-market books at 2-4 bucks digitally. Author gets paid (probably the same cut as he would with the printed copy) and the service provider gets a cut too. Of course we need to get the banks / merchant providers to chill on their overpriced minimums and massive annual fees in order for this to work too.
Free’s cool, I love it, but realistically, things like web infrastructure cost money and people perform well for money. I have a later plan for this tirade, but the thing about books, you will read them for a while, so I think even likely pirates are ok with buying $2 over a $2 song because music is over in 3 minutes. A book might take days to weeks of enjoyment.
Chris Anderson is single-handedly responsible for destroying about $500M in VC dollars (and years worth of entrepreneurial time) with his previous book “The Long Tail” which was thoroughly debunked and proven to be based on bullshit.
I pity the fools that believe his latest installment of bullshit.
That’s interesting that you say that, Brian. I recently heard an interview with him on NPR. Much of what he said was ridiculous or just flat-out wrong. I left feeling very unimpressed and uninterested in getting his book. But I did just get it for free–maybe my opinion will change after reading it.
I just downloaded it on my iPhone Kindle App FOR FREE.
Scribd retricts access to this book geographically outside USA. Luckily a workaround is popping out the emmbeded copy here and saving it as a bookmark.
Although I have a Kindle, I still purchased the book. I am about a quarter of the way through the book, and so far it has been a great read. The Gillette story really stood out to me so far.
I have always been a big fan of free business models. In the late nineties, I founded an editorial website dedicated solely to free stuff. Back then, directories were still playing a pretty important role in the navigation of the Internet. Through this free directory’s popularity, I was able to fund the current company I founded W3i (http://www.W3i.com) which provides ad-supported solutions for popular Windows applications.
Good work Chris! I love the economic foundation you bring to the book. I can’t wait to read the rest.
Looks like a lot of books are free on the Kindle/Kindle App here is the search for them:
http://www.amaz...2Cn%3A154606011
PDF copy anywhere?
The Kindle iPhone app and the Scribd download is geo-restricted!
I’m sitting in Denmark and find myself unable to download “FREE”.
Like Jeff, I would be interested in a link to a PDF.
Just read Alan Webber’s comments on Malcolm Gladwell & his option of this book. Once again great blog post highlighting this book:
Before you read this book you should read this blog article
http://rulesoft...-in-muddle.html
Why charge for something that should be free in the first place?
“Phew” is spelled “Phew” not “Whew”.