Good point on the freemium model though, I guess that’s one it doesn’t take into consideration–giving away a book for free doesn’t help sales if the book is really awful.

1) The rather unfortunate accidental extraction of chunks of wikipedia… and

2) The fact that anyone listening to the audio version in the car, whilst, say, on the way to work, would realise that the book was in fact a load of old rubbish (IMHO).

I liked the long tail, because there is something in the argument – His point about the need for filters to enable the long tail to really work, still stands I think (tho’ he didn’t explore anywhere that rather crucial point). Free was an entertaining 30 minute talk (I know – I saw it) stretched beyond credulity in world that had just discovered that debt wasn’t so cheap as to be free.

by the way… err, does social media guruness correlate with, um, facial hair? Guys?…

http://marshallk.com/social-media-consulting-can-be-extremely-valuable

The only danger with giving away older books is if the new book becomes a bigger hit than the old one. In that instances, readers of the new book (who never read the old one) may go back and buy the old one. So the new book can become marketing for the author’s backlist. Of course, that falls into the category of “nice problems to have.”

1) the nature of the content–one argument for the freemium model is that reading on a screen does not lend itself well to long-form reading. You give away a free version that’s read on a computer screen, people start reading it, and if they like it after 50 pages, they go buy the print version to read the whole thing. I haven’t read “Free”, but every Web 2.0 or business model book that I have read peters out after about 50 pages. By that point, you understand the argument being made and the rest of the book is just a bunch of anecdotes reinforcing the argument. There’s no need to read further, you can get enough from the beginnings of the free version. Contrast this with a fiction novel, like Doctorow writes. For a novel, you need to read the whole thing to get the full effect of the content.

2) the freemium model is great for selling your next book, not your current book–Baen Books has pioneered the idea of a free library. You can download free copies of an author’s older books. If they’re good, they’ll hopefully inspire you to buy the author’s new book, which is not free. This works great for books that are part of a series. Make book 1 in the series free as book 2 is released. Here, as you note, Anderson gave away the actual book he was trying to sell. Perhaps a better strategy would have been giving away his previous book to promote the new one.

I remember reading his (open access) Wired article on the Long Tail and then deciding to buy the book. It turned out to be a bad decision as there is nothing of consequence added to the book and the article is a more succinct read, but as a marketing tool the free article did indeed lead me to buy the book.

But I’m not sure how the free book would inspire me to buy the same book for free.

Also, and on a separate note, I suppose this is not a good moment to announce my new social media consulting services?