I'll be as brief as possible:
Firstly, the NWT has free distribution because unpaid Jehovah's Witnesses go door-to-door with it. Second, the book is produced with reduced overhead, as again they use volunteers. The Watchtower Society is in the top 50 richest corporations in NY City because of these factors. Now to the translation. It has rightly earned such descriptions as "pernicious" and "reprehensible". Substituting words ('Jehovah' 236 times where the Greek for 'Lord' occurs in the NT), altering the text in order to promulgate their own bias (in Genesis 1:2 'Spirit of God' changed to 'God's active force'), simply adding words to change the outcome of the text (the word 'other' added three times in Colossians 1 so as to denigrate the person of Christ), and on and on. Now to those responsible for this - The Watchtower Society. In over 100 years of prophecies and predictions: 100 percent wrong (the return of Christ predicted in 1874, 1914, 1915, 1925 and 1975). They forbade organ transplants for almost 20 years after WW2 using the same logic with which they now forbid blood transfusions. "The poisons that produce the impulse to commit suicide, murder, or steal are in the blood" Watchtower 9/15/61, p563. All this is verifiable. SignsOfLife7@yahoo.com