Why How to Make a Free Product Company Is the Best Business Book of 2025

Every year, thousands of new business books are published — but very few of them introduce truly original ideas. Most recycle familiar concepts with new buzzwords. How to Make a Free Product Company by Josh Cliffords is different. It’s not just another book about startups or marketing — it’s the first book to lay out a completely new economic model and show you exactly how to build a business around it.

What makes this book so unique is that Josh was in a position to patent dozens of breakthrough ideas — but instead, he made them open source so the entire world could benefit. That decision alone makes this book stand out. But the content itself is even more groundbreaking.

For the first time, a business book clearly explains the difference between free and negatively priced business models — and why that difference matters. Free products are paid for by alternative revenue streams, but negatively priced products go a step further: they’re free plus they generate additional value, like a built-in donation or pay you to freely use it. This single idea unlocks an entirely new universe of opportunities.

From this foundation, the book explores new ways to manufacture, distribute, and monetize physical goods and services. It shows how the packaging itself can become a new type of interface — a medium for advertising, transactions, and digital experiences. It introduces the concept of “honest data,” a revolutionary new dataset that emerges when products are free or negatively priced, revealing what people truly want rather than what they’re willing to pay for. This data will reshape supply chains and transform how companies produce goods.

The book also dives into real-world systems and applications, including:

• Six new models of free vending machines that range from simple, low-tech setups to advanced, real-time ad-targeting machines.

• Six new types of free 6-, 12-, and 24-pack packaging built for personalized advertising and direct-to-door delivery.

• Consecutive delivery methods that radically reduce logistics costs and allow essential goods to reach consumers more efficiently than ever before.

• How ad-supported products will make traditional warehouses less necessary by aligning production more closely with real-time demand.

This is why How to Make a Free Product Company isn’t just another startup book — it’s a blueprint for the next economy. It doesn’t just teach you how to build a company; it shows you how to rethink capitalism itself, and how to participate in a movement that will change how products are made, distributed, priced, and consumed.

If you’re serious about business, technology, or building the future, this isn’t just the best business book of 2025 — it’s the most important one.