Free, the new $9.99

Indulge me with a little business talk……

The blogosphere is buzzing with Chris Andersons Wired article on Free, which in fact is a free excerpt from his forthcoming book. The article is exceptional and one that is extremely relevant to our business of publishing, comics, games, etc. He also has a nice piece in Ad Age you can read here.

I’ll give you one non book related example. I broke down and bought an X Box 360 yesterday and with it came no games (Yeah, I’m old school, I remember getting Super Mario with my Nintendo 15 years ago!), so I passed on a few of the upgrades from them (the wireless adapter, HD cables) because I had to buy a game. Overall they would’ve had a larger spend from me had they given me a free game. More to the point why is Super Mario a brand that still survives today? They gave away millions of free game 15 or 20 years ago – not a bad way to build a franchise.

Anyway, read the Wired article and check out Chris’s Long Tail blog (which was also an exceptional book that is insanely relevant to the niche title world of comics and books). Also, as a tease, Chris will be interviewing a HUGE player in the book industry at BEA in June. Look for that announcement in the next few weeks.

-L