Chris Anderson is one of my favourite “big idea” guys. He’s the editor-in-chief of US Wired, and the author of The Long Tail (subtitled Why The Future Of Business Is Selling Less Of More). His new book is Free: The Future of a Radical Price, in which he explains how giving stuff away is changing the face of many businesses.

So, for example, a piece of software or a game will be given away free, with the belief that a percentage of the people who use it will end up paying for a related service or a premium version, such as support for the software, or extra game levels.

The book began as a Wired cover story, Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business, which provides a neat introduction to Anderson’s theory.

The hardback is out now, priced £18.99 (currently discounted to £9.41 on Amazon). But as you might expect, Anderson is also making his book available for free.

The ebook can be read – although not downloaded – at Scribd.com. An abridged 3-hour audio book is available on Spotify. Free is the first audio book to appear on Spotify. The 6-hour unabridged version can be downloaded free from Audible.

Anderson promises that the book will be rolled out in other free formats over the next few weeks, via iTunes, Kindle, Google Books and more. Check his blog for more details.

Most interestingly, Anderson and his UK publisher Random House are giving away an abridged paperback edition, which Anderson says is “the entire book minus, if memory serves, the appendixes”, courtesy of a sponsorship with Adobe and via the Brand Republic website. The paperback giveaway will begin at the end of this week.

I’d like to say I trumped Anderson by making my book The Rocketbelt Caper free in both ebook and paperback editions a couple of weeks ago. (See this write-up at TeleRead.) But Anderson was an inspiration for the free promotion, and his distribution model has the potential to really shake up the book industry.

Earlier this year I attended the London Book Fair and saw publishers attempting to embrace ebooks, but determined to charge paperback prices for electronic editions. This will not work for one simple reason: physical books are better than ebooks.

“If you believe that the physical book is the superior form, then you have to believe that people who love the sample will buy the physical book,” Anderson said at a keynote speech at SXSW in Austin earlier this year. And making the full version of Free available on Scribd.com is essentially offering a sample, as few readers will want to read the whole thing via Scribd’s online reader.

Making a paperback edition free courtesy of sponsorship is a really interesting idea. When I worked in publishing we briefly attempted something similar, but the project didn’t get off the ground, mainly because sponsors and advertisers just didn’t get the concept. But it’s essentially the same concept that allows newspapers and magazines to be distributed free. And free newspapers and magazines have seriously damaged their paid-for equivalents, so the book industry needs to take a careful look at what Anderson and Random House are doing here.

It would be fascinating to know how much Adobe has paid to sponsor the project, and how the figures stack up for Random House, who will apparently spend £30,000 promoting the “giveaway”.

So I’m looking forward to reading and listening to Free – for free. And if it’s any good I’ll most probably buy it). A victory for “freenomics”.

It would be remiss of me to end without saying that The Rocketbelt Caper is available as a free ebook for the long term, and a free paperback for a limited period, right here.

Paul Books free, The Rocketbelt Caper