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July 28, 2009

Download this book for FREE!

 (* Source: The Pirates Dilemma *)

 


Download The Pirate's Dilemma

Its funny how sometime something is for free and yet you choose to buy it.  That's what happened to me last week...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matt says...

 

Here you can download an electronic copy of the book. The price is entirely up to you.

To download, simply click on the link above or the book cover pictured on the left. You’ll be taken to a checkout page where you can set the price anywhere from $0.00 upwards. You’ll need to enter your email address, but I respect your online privacy and promise never to spam you.

Why would an author give away a book for free? Obviously it makes a lot of sense given the arguments in this particular book, but it’s true for all authors that piracy isn’t a threat, it’s an opportunity.

There are millions of books on amazon.com, and on average each will sell around 500 copies a year. The average American is reading just one book a year, and that number is falling. The problem (to quote Tim O’Reilly) isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity. Authors are lucky to be in a business where electronic copies aren’t considered substitutes for physical copies by most people who like reading books (for now at least).

By treating the electronic version of a book as information rather than property, and circulating it as widely as possible, many authors such as Paulo Coelho and Cory Doctorow actually end up selling more copies of the physical version. Pirate copies of The Pirate’s Dilemma are out there online anyway, and they don’t seem to have harmed sales. My guess is they are helping. To be honest, I was flattered that the book got pirated in the first place.

 

Posted by brian tiong at 11:40 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 17, 2008

Seth Godin's The Tribes Q&A ebook

(* Souce: Seth Godin *)

 

For those of you that have read the book... this is the crowd sourced followup.

For those of you that didn't read the book... after review this, you might buy the book.


Qacover

 

Seth says...

Dozens of volunteers, working together, put together this ebook:

Download TribesQA2.pdf

Yours to share or print or email, but please don't sell it or change it.

Not only is there a juicy insight on every page, but I'm comfortable saying it's the best designed PDF I've ever seen, worth making into a template for your next project.

Enjoy it.

 

Posted by brian tiong at 10:28 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

September 30, 2008

The *four* kinds of FREE

(* Source: Chris Anderson *)

 

four frees

 

 

Chris says...

A few weeks ago, I posted a diagram grouping free business models into three categories: cross-subsidies (eg, razor-and-blades), three-party markets (ads) and "freemium" (what economists call "versioning"; in this case most people get the free version). But as I was writing through that chapter, I realized that wasn't quite right.

The problem is that they're all cross-subsidies in one way or another:

  • Paid products subsidizing free products: This is a staple of business, from the popcorn that subsidizes the loss-making movie to the expensive wine subsidizing the cheap meal in a restaurant. Free just takes that further
  • Paying later subsidizing free now: The free cellphone with a two-year subscription contract is a classic example of the subsidy over time. It’s just shifting phone service from a point-of-sale revenue stream to an ongoing annuity. In this case, your future self is subsidizing your present self, with the hope that you won’t think about what you’ll be paying each year for the phone service but are instead dazzled by the free phone you get today.
  • Paying people subsidizing free people: From the men who pay to get into nightclubs where the women get in free, to “kids get in free”, to progressive taxation where the wealthy pay more so the less wealthy pay less (and sometimes nothing), the notion that segmenting a market into groups by their willingness to pay is a conventional part of pricing theory. Free takes that to the extreme, extending to a class of consumers who will get the product of service for free. The hope is that the free consumers will attract or bring with them paying consumers (the aforementioned women or kids) or that some fraction of the free consumers will convert to paying consumers. When you walk through the amazing interiors of Las Vegas attractions, you get the view for free on the hope that some people will stop and gamble or shop.

So here I'll try another pass at getting this taxonomy right. The above has four kinds of free, with "gift economy" as the forth. That's still a form of cross subsidy, but it's so diffuse--threading from the reputation and attention economies back to money through some long process that's often impossible to quantify (like the way I'm going to financially benefit from this post)--that I don't include money in its diagram at all.

I've also modified the first to describe it as a direct cross-subsidy, which is to say that's typically you subsidizing yourself. The others are all other people subsidizing you, or you subsidizing other people. Finally, for economic purists out there, note that what I'm calling three-party markets (FREE 2) is what economists call "two-sided markets".

 

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December 19, 2007

The Big Switch

 

(* Source: Techcrunch *)

 
Author Nick Carr is someone I used to love to hate. He wrote blog posts that I strongly disagreed with - such as this one about the long tail of blogging, and another arguing that Web 2.0 had serious faults. We’ve had numerous direct disagreements as well - he’s called me smug and worse, and I’ve fought back.

But over time I’ve grown to respect his writing and thought process, even though he still takes the occasional mild shot at our posts. The guy just writes really, really well.

His first book, Does IT Matter?, helped change the way companies and vendors thought about technology and its place in the corporate entity. Now he’s preparing to publish his second book, The Big Switch. You can pre-order it on Amazon.

I have an early copy of the book. It’s timely and well written, arguing that computing services are turning into a utility, much as the electric grid emerged a hundred years ago. He argues that society will change drastically as a result.

I asked Carr if we could give away a dozen autographed copies of the book before it hits the market, and he agreed. If you’d like one, please leave a comment below. All you have to do is make sure to include your real email address in the comment form so that we can contact you. Tell us something interesting about yourself and why you want the book. Agree or disagree with something Nick has said on his blog (the first two links in the top paragraph above are easy targets). Or just have a good rant. The twelve most interesting responses will get the book shipped out to them asap.

More here 

 

 

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November 27, 2007

Free Internet Marketing Related Ebooks

(* Source: Caroline Middlebroke *)

 

Thanks for sharing your internet marketing FREE booklist, Caroline.

 

 

  1. Adsense Arbitrage, Brad Callen, 40 pages
  2. Authority Black Book, Jack Humphrey, 64 pages
  3. Bending the Web, Jack Humphrey, 30 pages
  4. Blog Profits Blueprint, Yaro Starak, 55 pages
  5. Buying and Selling Domains for Profit, Joel Comm, 33 pages
  6. Google Adwords Made Easy, Brad Callen, 85 pages
  7. Instant List Profits, Fabio Marciano, 126 pages
  8. Internet Business Manifesto, Richard Schefren, 29 pages
  9. Keyword Research Guide, Wordtracker, 52 pages
  10. Killer Flagship Content, Chris Garret, 17 pages
  11. Marketing Pilgrim Essays, Various Authors, 163 pages
  12. Marketing Wisdom for 2007, Marketing Sherpa, 56 pages
  13. Social Media Daily, Michelle Macphearson, 26 pages
  14. Teaching Sells, Brian & Tony Clark, 22 pages
  15. The IM-Myth, Russel Brunson, 44pages
  16. The Internet Money Tree, Joel Comm, 15 pages
  17. The Resource Report, Mike Filsaime, 37 pages
  18. Your Online Money Factory, Kevin Riley, 23 pages
  19. Warrior Tips v3, Various Authors, 133 pages
  20. Web Traffic Orgasm: A Case Study, Dean Hunt, 20 pages
  21. Zero Dollars, a Little Talent, and 30 Days, Jennifer Laycock, 143 pages

 

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