FLIRTing with the Crowds

Chris Anderson had a post today on why you should give your book away for free. The idea of giving something for free in order to monetize it later indirectly is surely known to all those having read his book (is there anyone who hasn’t?).

I totally agree with Chris’ reasoning. I’m planning on writing a book this Spring but I’m definitely not planning on making big bucks with it directly. Instead I will allow downloading it for free and I will sell it for just the production costs (or maybe for just a tiny premium). The motivation is of course the chairman-of-the-board seats that ultimately result from spreading my infinite wisdom to the ‘right people’ - and ‘as many as possible’ naturally maximizes the possibility of ‘right’.

There is however, an exception to this thinking. People not being completely rational, they do place value to the amount of money it costs for them to acquire a book. In other words, they might not perceive a free book and the information it holds to be as valuable to them in comparison to one that costs money. This is of course the reasoning behind the pricing of luxury goods - if anyone could get them, they wouldn’t be as wanted. But it works on a smaller scale with ordinary products too. There is surely a point in an author’s career when she needs to start charging for books if just to stay credible and interesting enough to be picked up by the ‘right people’ - some of which may not be rational. Don’t you agree?