Speaker - October 2009

need, thanks very much.’ For others, they’ll see that your ideas clearly have application, but you haven’t gotten into the details that they really need. Then that turns into a speaking engagement or a book purchase.”

Anderson acknowledges that many speakers choose not to give away anything, or don’t have anything that can be easily given away. “I wouldn’t presume to say that my model works for everyone everywhere. But every speaker has to admit that, in a market where people are distributing ideas and content for free, it has an impact on you, whether you like it or not. If you have a fantastic idea that you can’t really share, I suspect you will struggle in a marketplace that has so many ideas freely propagating.”

In;the;final;analysis,;Anderson;says;that;it;comes;down;to;your;belief in your core, premium product, whether that is speeches, books or something else entirely. “If that still has value, you should not fear the free form, because it’s marketing the premium form,” he says. “You still need to do a good job of making people aware there is a premium form and why they might prefer it. But the two are not in opposition.”

Born (and Raised) Free

While the book Free launched in July, the topic of free has been interwoven in Anderson’s experience for decades. “I certainly didn’t invent free,” he says. “And for the type of free that we’re talking about, you need to consider that the Web is now 20 years old. So really, the book came out of my own experience of free, rather than the other way around.”