I still remember reading this article and being fascinated with the concept of “free.” A lot of my doctoral work centers around the concept of “free” and I was hungry for information on the subject. As I was finishing the article I thought to myself, “This would make a great book. Maybe I should contact the author of the article and try to write it with him.”

Then I finished the article and saw that it was based on a forthcoming book by Chris Anderson – Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Ever since then I’ve been waiting with eager anticipation.

Happily for me, the wait ended today when a surprise package arrived containing the book. I’ve been devouring it. I plan to give an in-depth review of the book and I’ve been having too much fun reading to stop to write. So tonight I’ll probably just get started.

First, let me tell you that a free abridged audio book is available at http://hyperionbooks.com/free. I’ve already downloaded the whole thing and though it says “abridged” the prologue at least was word for word. Read by Chris Anderson and very high quality. I read on an Amazon forum a post saying it was ironic that the book Free wasn’t “free” and I hope that the undoubtedly nice, but also less-informed individual reads the comment I made.

I feel like I’ve studied a lot about free, but even the first chapter taught me new things. For example did you know that Jell-O got it’s start with “free”? The short version of the story is for several years Jell-O was a failing company. There was little or no demand for the product. To make things worse, salespeople were not allowed to “sell” Jell-O door to door. So instead they would give away free recipe books and then consumers would go to local stores to buy them. It worked for Jell-O!

Anderson then talks about the Gillette model and also debunks the myth that the main staple of “free” with Gillette was to give away the razor and sell the blade.  In fact Gillette sold its razors at discounted prices to banks and they gave them away.

Just to whet your appetite of what’s to come, Anderson addresses head on  doubts people have about free, and also includes 50 business models built on free.

I’m going to keep blogging about Free and I highly recommend you grab a copy now.