If there's one word that has shaped the world of books in this first decade of the 21st century it must be: Free. This Anglo-Saxon four-letter word, derived from Old English and Old Norse, has always packed a punch, politically. Now it has begun to have a deeper cultural significance, too.
The most complete attempt to transform "free" into a concept for our times came with Chris Anderson's book of the same name (Free: the Future of a Radical Price) published by Random House in 2008 in sumptuous hardback, priced – with no hint of irony – £18.99.
Free was widely reviewed, but Anderson's idea did not go quite as viral as his previous foray into cyber-thought, The Long Tail.
Meanwhile, the gospel of "free" found sustained support in the world of copyright reform, and "free commons", a subject this blog has often addressed. Anderson's central point – that when something becomes software it inevitably becomes free – is one of those zeitgeisty ideas that echoes Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia. Wales once expressed his dream for an online encyclopdia thus: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge."
Perhaps the nearest thing to a philosophical examination of the underpinning of "free" came with the re-publication of Lewis Hyde's 1983 cult book, The Gift. Some people are passionate believers in this book. I am not one of them: to me, it promises a lot more than it delivers. But there's no question that it tunes into an important strand of contemporary cultural opinion. Its assertion that "a work of art is a gift not a commodity" raises some profound, and important questions about the nature of the literary transaction.
So much for preamble: in a few weeks' time there's going to be the biggest explosion of "free" in living memory with World Book Night.
On 5 March a UK charity, organised by the publisher of Canongate, Jamie Byng, will be orchestrating the free distribution of 1m free books, a mass distribution of some 25 titles chosen by Mr Byng and his associates.
I will, no doubt, be writing about this high-minded, philanthropic project again, but today I note that sometimes even "free" needs all the help it can get. Byng and his team are chasing (free) subscribers to the World Book Night programme. The subscription deadline closes on January 24. If you want to sign up to give away a favourite novel, or perhaps a volume of poetry, log on right now.
"Free" is free, but it comes at a price, like everything that matters.
