There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Somehow, someway, you’re paying for that sandwich. Just maybe not in the way you’d think.

That’s according to Chris Anderson’s latest book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” (Hyperion; $26.99). The book, along with its road map to “free” economics in the digital age, is generating a lot of buzz (and a little controversy) in media circles.

Anderson is enamored with free. That’s why he’s distributing his book at no charge via Google Books, Scribd, iTunes and Kindle. That’s why he wrote it using Google Docs and a Firefox Web browser. “Everything else I do on this computer is free, from my email to my Twitter feeds,” he writes in the book’s prologue. “Even the wireless access is free, thanks to the coffee shop I’m sitting in.”

Anderson, editor of Wired magazine and author of “The Long Tail,” takes a valiant stab at explaining some of the 21st century’s more puzzling contradictions. For instance: How do Google and Linux make money giving stuff away?
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