Digital content opens up a whole new ways of thinking about price, value and success.

Some time ago, I read the new book from Chris Anderson Free: The Future of a Radical Price It was a very busy period of my life and I had ‘parked’ the conclusions contained in the book for a later time – and then forgot about it!

Anyway, something that came into my in-box earlier today reminded me of the power of giving content away.  But before going there, let me briefly come back to Anderson’s book.  An extract from this link talking about what in the UK we know as jelly and in the US the name of Jell-O, (nice history on Wikipedia):

But it didn’t sell. Jell-O was too foreign a food and too unknown a brand for turn-of-the-century consumers. Kitchen traditions were still based on Victorian recipes, where every food type had its place. Was this new jelly a salad ingredient or a dessert?

For two years, Wait kept trying to stir up interest in Jell-O, with little success. Eventually, in 1899, he gave up and sold the trademark — name, hyphen, and all — to Orator Frank Woodward, a local businessman. The price was $450.

Woodward was a natural salesman, and he had settled in the right place. LeRoy had become something of a nineteenth- century huckster hotbed, best known for its patent medicine makers. Woodward sold plenty of miracle cures and was creative with plaster of paris, too. He marketed plaster target balls for marksmen and invented a plaster laying nest for chickens that was infused with an anti-lice powder.

But even Woodward’s firm, the Genesee Pure Food Company, struggled to find a market for powdered gelatin. It was a new product category with an unknown brand name in an era where general stores sold almost all products from behind the counter and customers had to ask for them by name. The Jell-O was manufactured in a nearby factory run by Andrew Samuel Nico. Sales were so slow and disheartening for the new product that on one gloomy day, while contemplating a huge stack of unsold Jell-O boxes, Woodward offered Nico the whole business for $35. Nico refused.

Anderson then explores what Woodward does next:

So in 1902 Woodward and his marketing chief, William E. Humelbaugh, tried something new. First, they crafted a three-inch ad to run in Ladies’ Home Journal, at a cost of $336. Rather optimistically proclaiming Jell-O “America’s Most Famous Dessert,” the ad explained the appeal of the product: This new dessert “could be served with the simple addition of whipped cream or thin custard. If, however, you desire something very fancy, there are hundreds of delightful combinations that can be quickly prepared.”

Then, to illustrate all those richly varied combinations, Genesee printed up tens of thousands of pamphlets with Jell-O recipes and gave them to its salesmen to distribute to homemakers for free.

(My emphasis – do read the extract in full from here.)  The book is highly recommended.

So what was it that came into my email in-box?  It was an email from Leo Babauta of Zen Habits, a Blog that I subscribe to.  This is what it said:

As you know, I released my new book, focus, a couple weeks ago — in free and premium digital versions.

I’m happy to announce that focus is now in the Kindle Store. You can get the full book — the free chapters plus bonus chapters from me and five other authors — for $8.99. It doesn’t include the videos, audio interviews and bonus PDFs in the full version.

So if one followed the link to the focus book, then you would see this:

The Free Version

The free version is simple: it’s 27 chapters that you can download for free, without having to give an email address or do anything else. It’s uncopyrighted, and you can share it with as many people as you like.

Download free version here (a pdf download).

Read the table of contents.

Again, you can share this ebook freely, so feel free to post it on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, or email.

I have no way of knowing how many downloads have been made but I suspect many more than one might imagine.

What I would be curious is to know from amongst the many Learning from Dogs readers how many of you have read this Post to the point of downloading the book for yourself, or others?

Fascinating ideas.

By Paul Handover