Therein lies the paradox of Free:  People are making lots of money charging nothing [Google being the prime example of this].  Not nothing for everything, but nothing for enough that we have essentially created an economy as big as a good-sized country around the price of $0.00.  How

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did this happen and where is it going?

In the Prologue of his book (pages 1 & 2), he points to the example of the Monty Python team:  claiming to be exasperated as to the amount of digital piracy of their programs, in November 2008 they posted lots of their high quality archival video material free on YouTube.  But they asked for:

…. something in return.  None of your drivelling, mindless comments.  Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.

And according to Anderson, they were wildly successful, with their DVDs climbing “to number  2 on Amazon’s Movies and TV best-sellers list, with increased sales of 23,000 percent”.

The point that Anderson is making is that providing free information and entertainment is the way the world now turns – having the “force of economic gravity”, and that organisations will need to adapt to make money off of the “free”.  Giving away lots of free samples will encourage purchase, provide training instead of selling software, sell merchandise and concert tickets and don’t worry about the free downloading of music, but instead charge for extras and add-ons and up-sells.

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He makes the point that the difference between something which costs and something which is free is enormous, even if the cost is small.  An example:  Amazon’s offer of “free shipping” for orders greater than $25 (alas, not available in Australia, but that’s a whole other discussion) is wildly successful.