Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired and the man who made The Long Tail into one of the most used phrases of the Web 2.0 era, has a (relatively) new book out called Free: The Future of a Radical Price.

I’ve had the book on my to-read list for a few months now, but as part of one of my “money management” resolutions, I’ve decided to only buy books if absolutely necessary, especially considering the number of unread books sitting on my bookshelf at the moment and even more especially considering the fact that there is a branch of the San Francisco Public Library about 2 blocks from my apartment. It’s rather ironic, but absolutely fitting that I wouldn’t buy a book called Free. I’m glad I waited, though!

Yesterday, as I was browsing through the iTunes store looking for podcasts, I stumbled across this one. It’s a podcast of Chris Anderson reading the book! Why they chose to call it a podcast instead of an audiobook is an interesting question in itself, but that’s not the point. The book is free. Download it.

I haven’t finished it yet, but so far it’s pretty interesting in a Freakonomics meets the Internet sort of way. It does have a lot of real-world, offline examples, especially in the history of the Free model, so it’s not entirely tech-centric. From what I’ve heard so far it’s definitely worthwhile. There is a print version available too, if you prefer page turning and dog-earring.

Not sure if I’ll do any sort of review of the book once I’ve finished listening to it, but I thought it was a pretty nifty find (it is a $22 book after all!). If you’re into techy/culture/sociology types of books, almost all of Lawrence Lessig‘s books are also available online under a Creative Commons license with more coming soon. I haven’t found any free audio versions of them (or any other good books) yet, but if you have, let me know!

Enjoy!