What interests me is why this particular book has caused such a large amount of infighting and if it’s misplaced. I wanted to wait to chime in myself until I had a chance to, you know, actually read the book. Or in this case listen to it. Anderson is certainly taking his own medicine in giving away different versions of the book for free including an unabridged audio book (read by Anderson) and free for a limited time ebooks. Normally I’m not the audio book kind of guy but this fit my budget and gave a sense of what an Anderson presentation on the topic would resemble.

So now that I have “read” it, does it deserve the brouhaha it’s getting? Not really.

But there’s more to it than that.

First, let me take a step back. As some of you know, I was previously head of MGM Studio’s internal web department. To say that “The Long Tail” came up on occasion would be an understatement. That book was incredibly popular at the studios because it pointed to untapped revenue for the extensive film libraries the studios own. The problem with the idea of the long tail is it mostly benefits companies like Amazon.com who can efficiently warehouse an incredible amount of niche product. It’s much harder to take advantage as a content producer/distributor unless your costs are incredibly low. This led to a bit of a long tail backlash on the internet. That it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and that hits still rule at the end of the day. Through this trial by fire, Anderson seems to have built a love/hate reputation. With this in mind it is not surprising that there has been such debate over Free.

When thinking about Free with this history in mind, you see why its reviews tend to be about Anderson, how this helps his speaking career and if we really want a world where we don’t pay for the work of others. The actual ideas in the book tend to get short shrift. And the main idea is (despite the title) that free is not that radical of a price and that it’s in use everywhere you look. From free supermarket samples to the free genius bar at Apple stores to free entrance for kids at museums, free is everywhere. In fact the book concludes with fifty business models built on free. This opened up my thinking in terms of the pricing/revenue options available to businesses – especially when the per-unit cost of digital products is added to the equation.

It seems many presume that a model based on free must mean a profitless model. To wit, John Gruber pointing out that Daring Fireball is “decidedly not free” when his model of sponsorships and advertising subsidies to cover free-to-read content is exactly what Anderson is talking about.

In the end, it may be that people have trouble with the idea that their work may be given away for free. We all want to feel that we produce something that people would pay for. But really we need to think about the things we create and the things we charge for as two separate, complimentary products. To me that is well worth discussion but not the earth-shattering change some seem to see it as.