[Update: 3:15pm, 9-7-2010. Sigh. This is a US-only offer. My apologies to colleagues and friends in other countries. I'm told you can buy it on Amazon.com in other countries, at least in hard copy.]

Our new book, Empowered, is free on Kindle through September 10th. That means anybody with a Kindle or Kindle reader (iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android, PC, or Mac) can download and read it for free forever.

My coauthor Josh Bernoff explains why we're not crazy to do this. It boils down to: We hope you read it and share your thoughts and your own HERO experiences with friends and colleagues. For my part, I'd be thrilled to hear directly back from you or read about your own HERO experiences in comments or posts or tweets or video narratives. Here's Josh's post: 

Starting today and continuing until this Friday September 10, you can download Empowered to your Kindle at no charge.

You want to know how to manage your company in the age of empowered customers, don't you? If you've got a Kindle, what's stopping you?

Now to the other question. Are we crazy?

Some people have told me that giving away Empowered on Kindle makes it seem worthless. Or that I'm giving up revenue.

But I'm gambling on a different outcome.

Empowered cover I think the book is going to unleash a lot of HEROes. I would like to see thousands of you read it, get inspired, energize your customers, and transform your companies. I would love it if you got sufficiently excited to tell somebody else. Go ahead, start something.

I would like it very much if you would prove me right. If you do, plenty more authors and publishers will do this. Reward my faith in you. Download the book and read it now. Then review it, talk about it, tweet it.

Note: If you have an iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Mac, or PC, there are Kindle apps for those devices too. So you can get it free as well.

And if you prefer print, we love you too. You can buy the book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local bookstore. It will be everywhere by next week.

Enjoy!