Check out this vid of Wired Editor Chris Anderson talking about his book released this past Summer, titled Free, where he discusses the concept of how to make money giving away content.

Thanks to commenter Mindi for bringing this to my attention. Cool.

The debate surrounding free content has become so heated it melts the keyboards of most Bloggers, Musicians, Visual Artists and other Creators. But does it work for Authors?

Anyone who’s published a book knows that you’re expected to give away a few things for free, including sample chapters, and of course review and publicity copies of your book. Most Authors have done free lectures in exchange for a table at the back of the room from which to sell their stuff.

But what if you gave away the entire book? All the time? To everybody?

Bloggers have been particularly frustrated by the issue of what to give away, and what to sell, at any of the conventions and gatherings I’ve been to in 2009. Most of them have written the equivalent of several books and not gained a penny from their efforts. Bloggers are getting a bit angry about this, because we’ve all seen so many promises of things like huge waves of blogging ad revenue that simply haven’t come true. In addition, people have become quite jaded by a proliferation of quality free content, and don’t seem willing to pay for information that helps them, entertains them, or even makes them money in turn.

But there are people making decent money – in fact, some making fantastic money – giving away content. How are they doing it?

According to Blogger and Podcaster Magazine, there are a few basic ways that people profit from free online content, including (for the most part) advertising, merchandise, and using the content to sell something more valuable: their consulting expertise. Like you, I was worried that this meant that if Authors wanted to learn from other industries and try giving away their books while making money in some other fashion, we might need to place completely unrelated and distracting ads alongside our books, which are now published as websites. This might work for some, but definitely not for all Authors and their creative works.

Seth Godin argues that  “…The book is a souvenir.” In the previous link, he discusses several cases where Authors – including himself, of course – who have released their books for free on the internet, are still selling paper or downloadable copies. Why? Because what people pay for is the instrument of delivery. Special leather-bound editions might only sell 250 copies, but they could sell for upwards of $250 per copy. CD’s containing eBooks, along with perhaps some bonus material, are still capable of significant digital cachet. Here’s an Author’s opportunity to partner with a graphic artist and create something elegant, beautiful, and distinctive – something irresistable.

Even 37Signals, the company who created the online project management system called Basecamp (that last one is an affiliate link), offered their ebook Getting Real for free if you read it off their website. They sell a downloadable version for $19, and a paper copy for $25. Despite offering it for free, they’ve sold over 30,000 copies of the downloadable version alone.

Examine this additional model from filmmaker Nina Paley, who created the film Sita Sings the Blues, based on the Ramayana of Valmiki. (Well, why the hell not?) Her very public accounting (see the link under her name) of the ways and how much money she’s made by not selling her film tells us something very important: this model does work, but you have to take a wholistic approach. Just one of those revenue streams is not enough – you need to present a well-rounded series of offerings.

As Paley says on her website, “There is the question of how I’ll get money from all this. My personal experience confirms audiences are generous and want to support artists. Surely there’s a way for this to happen without centrally controlling every transaction. The old business model of coercion and extortion is failing. New models are emerging, and I’m happy to be part of that. But we’re still making this up as we go along. You are free to make money with the free content of Sita Sings the Blues, and you are free to share money with me. People have been making money in Free Software for years; it’s time for Free Culture to follow. I look forward to your innovations.” (Links in previous paragraph are from Paley’s original website. I encourage you to give her money.)

Even with all the heat, I think I’m up for the challenge. Even if it melts this keyboard.

I’ve had an expression for a number of years that I quote to clients, partners and affiliates as often as appropriate: “Every organization is a sales organization.”(c) This means that no matter what you are part of – your school, your company, your sports team, your scouting group, your religious assembly, your book project or anything else that you have on your plate – if it’s an organization that wants to grow, selling is how that will happen. This expression also means that every activity you undertake can and must relate somehow to your sales and marketing plan – even if it’s a stretch.

Because self-published authors are almost always also self-promoted, self-publicized, and self-sold authors, they must find ways to make a single selling activity work for them in more than one way. This means that they must have a good selling strategy, based on a big-picture view of their market, and they must constantly remind themselves of their “Grand Vision”, or what it is they are trying to achieve.

But when I talk about sales to some clients, they stumble and don’t know where to go with the topic. They don’t consider themselves “sales people”. This is confusing to me, because in fact, many of them are already quite accomplished at selling. They network, they fix things, they clarify, and they communicate. They do so by providing a solution to a clearly-identified problem, and not by pushing something on someone who doesn’t want what they have to offer. That, my friends, is the definition of quality selling.

Just like writing a quality book, quality selling begins in the research. For most of my authors, they are publishing to promote their current business or enterprise, or to raise their professional profile or that of their business. They already know who their audience is and what they want. Or do they?

One of the best all-around selling research techniques that is weirdly overlooked by most people in publishing is the Focus Group. This is fancy talk for “asking people what they think”. It is necessary to perform research by talking to your readers. This is not selling – this is asking. (Which incidentally, is great practice for selling.) By asking questions and stimulating discussion in a group of independent and completely objective people, you are getting the highest quality information that any sales person could ask for: somebody’s real and unbiased opinion.

For one client that I worked with, we did this in a very casual way, by having what we called a “One-Night-Reading-Stand”, where people came by a local coffee joint, and in exchange for a free coffee and a copy of the book, we asked them what they thought. The author was not present, so people were free to speak their mind without worrying about what the author might think. We recorded the entire event as an .mp3 so that I could analyze it later. The author never heard a word of the interview. I made a summary of what needed to be done, and delivered a to-do list to the author later. The participants were never identified publicly, and they ended up being advocates for the product in the market. Everybody left happy, including the author, because he knew what needed to be done to be a success.

This research is what enabled the author to tweak his product and message, and isn’t it funny how he sold out his first printing in 60 days, without having to “sell” anything? Research in this case was performed before the first printing, but this could easily be done at any point in the production process. By networking, fixing, clarifying, and communicating, the author tripled his anticipated sales.

The bottom line: selling more of your self-published books is the same as selling anything. Apply good research, create your own opportunities for publicity (the coffee shop took on the book as a product, and many people stopped to ask us what we were doing that night), network (all the people in the group ended up helping to sell the book – they were selected as “people of influence” for their role in the community that we wanted to target), fix and clarify (the messaging activity that took place that night helped us avoid some less-than-obvious pitfalls and develop clear marketing messages for the book), and communicate (everybody that entered the coffee shop that night left with a bookmark that had a copy of the URL on it, and a handful more to pass on to friends, plus we we turned the focus group into a marketing activity by submitting a press release to the local paper).

Successful self-sold books = a single activity, turned into multiple selling activities.