Free: The Future of a Radical Price

Free - Free: business models for the challenges of the Internet (English Original Title: Free: The Future of a Radical Price) is a book by the American journalist and chief editor of Wired Magazine, Chris Anderson, which appeared in 2009, the publisher Hyperion Books. 2010, the revised English paperback edition was published with the title altered Free: How Today's Smartest Businesses Profit by Giving Something for Nothing with a new preface. In this the author goes into some reviews ( see below). Anderson is also the author of The Long Tail in 2007, whose thoughts he pursued in Free.

The book examines new business models, products and services as a marketing strategy for free (ie Free) offer.

In his opinion, there were four categories of Free:

Publication and reception

Free appeared on 7 July 2009 in the United States, after Anderson had published the night before in his blog a browser - readable version of the book and an unabridged version of an audio book. In the German-speaking world the book was published in August 2009 in a translation by Birgit Schöbnitz and Dzifa Vode the publisher campus.

Regardless of this controversy, ranked the hardcover edition of the book to number 12 in the bestsellers list of the New York Times. For a limited time the book was also available as a free download and was in the first two weeks to 200,000 300,000 times downloaded. The unabridged audiobook remained free.

In a widely read review in a newspaper The New Yorker Malcolm Gladwell criticized the premise of the book chosen. Anderson responded in his blog at Wired.com and in the talk show Charlie Rose. The book was also reviewed in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.