Feb
25
2008New Book by Chris "Long Tail" Anderson Explores the Economics of Free
25
2008
“FREE” sounds like a fantastic upcoming book discussing the problems of making money from digital content. It’s not out yet, but BoingBoing.net reviews an accompanying Wired article. The key thesis is this: There is no such thing as a market for digital goods, only a market for digital services.
The book/article also discusses the huge psychological gap between products that cost nothing, and products that almost cost nothing. I can certainly attest to this, as I recently signed up for JungleDisk, a data storage service backed up by Amazon.com’s “pay-as-you-go” S3 storage service. Their rates are extremely low, and I haven’t really started using it, but I did rack up a $0.02 bill thus far (you’re charged a penny per 1,000 requests to list your files, a penny for 10,000 get requests)
Even though these three cents probably have me covered for months of requests, my first reaction when seeing the two cents on my account was an instinctive “Uh-oh, am I sure I want to commit to do this?”. All over TWO CENTS. Money I would hesitate to pick up off the floor. Eventually common sense prevailed, but something in my “lizard brain” was triggered.
I’m definitely looking forward to this book. As DRM dies a quiet death, the time is ripe for this book.
[Photo credit: me! I’ve been waiting for an excuse to use it…]