The Long Tail

A New York Times Bestseller!

If you checked out today’s New York Times Book Review section, you’ll see that FREE made the list in its first week of eligibility. It’s #12, tied for #11 (that’s what that little asterisk means).

We expect it to dip in its second week due to the free versions of the book cannibalizing sales, then stay strong longer than usual as the free offers expire and word of mouth from all the free readers turns into sales. So far in the first two weeks the book was downloaded, in one digital form or another between 200,000 and 300,000 times (we’re still compiling stats). That’s a lot. Now we’ll find out what it means.

FREE on the Kindle (free); get it while it lasts!

You can get FREE free on the Kindle (and Kindle iPhone app if you don’t have a Kindle) now. It’s been up for a few days and the free offer will end on Wed, Jul 22nd, so get it now.  [UPDATE: the free offer is now over, and the book is now at the usual discount price of $9.99. It’s still available for free on Scribd, Google Books and Shortcovers, as well as in audiobook form on iTunes] As you can see from the above screenshot, it’s already the #1 Kindle book. (US only, I’m afraid.)

It’s also available for free on the Sony Reader, also for one week.

The book is also available for free (for one month) on Shortcovers, where you can link to individual chapters and pages.

For those of you outside the US, local free versions will be determined by the publisher in each region. Please stay tuned.

FREE audiobook on iTunes (free, natch)

 

The free audiobook of FREE is now on iTunes, with some very nice front page promotion. Podcast serialized version coming up soon.

For those outside the US, you can stream or download the MP3s at wired.com.

The Kindle version should be out later this week, along with some other ebook readers.

The priceless rollout continues: Google Books

FREE is now available for free on Google Books, too. Like Scribd, this one is a web-based screen reading experience, but it has the added advantage of a live Table of Contents (see above), so you can easily get from chapter to chapter or pull up sidebars without having to page through the book.

Like the other free text versions, the Google Books one will be time-limted: one month. (The audiobook versions are the only ones that will remain free forever).

Next up, in the coming week: free FREE on Kindle and other ebook readers, including the iPhone.

[UPDATE: many of these versions, including Google, are US-only. This is just a function of the way global book rights work, and the fragmentation thereof. I wish it were different and we’re working to release free versions in other languages when those editions of the book comes out, but in the meantime my apologies to readers outside the US if you’re not getting full text.]

FREE for free: first ebook and audiobook versions released

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

We’re going to be rolling out the free digital forms of FREE over the next two weeks. First up: the Scribd form, right here on the blog (and anywhere else you want—it’s embeddable). This is the whole book!

(click “full screen” for a better reading experience).

Also released today: the free unabridged audiobook. You can either download the whole things as zipped MP3 files, or play them on the Wired.com microsite.

 

You can also get the audiobook from Audible.com in two forms

1) Unabridged (six hours; free)
2) Abridged (three hours; $7.49)

Why is the whole book free in audio form, but half the book is $7.49? Because, as the Audible.com listing explains,“Get the point in half the time! In this abridged edition, the author handpicked the most important and engaging chapters and points, cutting three hours from the length without losing key concepts. Time is money!”

Over the next week or so, we’ll be releasing other versions, including iTunes podcast and download, Kindle, Google Books and more. All free, for varying lengths of time (from a week to forever). I’ll be tracking the stats for everything and sharing the results of these experiments here over the next month.

Making a physical book free, too

FREE will be released in the US this week (July 7th in hardcover; July 9th in ebooks) and I’ll be updating this blog with the various ways you can get it for free as they come online. But in the meantime, here’s how we made the physical book free in the UK.

Above, you can see the UK hardcover on the right and a special sponsored paperback on the left.

Here’s the description of the paperback give-away from Random House, the UK publisher, which will kick off at the end of the week.

Adobe and Brand Republic

We have concluded a sponsorship partnership with Adobe  - who, like Spotify [which is distributing the free audiobook, UK only], adopt a freemium model with both free and paid for goods and services. In association with Adobe we will be offering a limited number of abridged sponsored versions of FREE in paperback and e-Book through BrandRepublic.com.

The free paperbacks and e-Book will be promoted to an audience of over 689,000 unique users through Brand Republic’s website, the leading online business portal for the advertising, media, marketing and PR industries. UK users will be directed to a page where they will be presented with a choice to download their free abridged ebook, register and receive a free abridged paperback, or buy the full ‘premium’ hardback version (at a discount).

Brand Republic’s considerable user audience is a great fit for FREE’s target market, attracting consumers across the media industry. Through Brand Republic the promotion will be supported by over £30,000 of online advertising.

This special sponsored paperback edition is the entire book minus, if memory serves, the appendixes.