The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson

Oct 09, 2007 Otis Chandler rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, business

Interesting Tidbits
- Three forces need to create the long tail:
1. democratize production: give average people the ability to create quality content (movies, music, blogs)
2. democratize distribution: technology to aggregate *all* the content in a genre (Amazon, Netflix, iTunes)
3. Connect Supply and Demand: filters to help people find the niche's they are interested in (Google, recommendations, best-seller lists)
- One quarter of Amazon's sales come from books outside its top 100,000 titles. T...more

6 likes · like · see review

Feb 09, 2009 Lilly G rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is an exploration of how niche markets are on the rise courtesy of better distribution. And that's a gross summary. Much discussion is given to the rise of the digital world and how it's expanded the marketplace so that there can be a Long Tail Distribution (for you statistics nerds out there)--- beyond the major hits, you can continue to sell (for example) less popular items, and lots of them. There are markets within markets.

A very conversationally written book, by the editor of Wire...more

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 12, 2008 Brooks rated it 5 of 5 stars

I heard a clip on this book on NPR back in August and have had wanted to read this book for sometime. When I first heard about this book, we were having a conflict with one of our e-commerce customers. There SKU base kept growing and my boss kept saying they did not control their inventory. Well, here is proof positive that they did know what they were doing. The book is written by an editor of Wired magazine. The basic premise is that with infinite variety and reduced (and in many cases zero) d...more I heard a clip on this book on NPR back in August and have had wanted to read this book for sometime. When I first heard about this book, we were having a conflict with one of our e-commerce customers. There SKU base kept growing and my boss kept saying they did not control their inventory. Well, here is proof positive that they did know what they were doing. The book is written by an editor of Wired magazine. The basic premise is that with infinite variety and reduced (and in many cases zero) distribution costs, the non-hits are where the future of profitability in business. Basically, you need low distribution/production costs (democratize production), high amount of content (democratize distribution – aggregators like Amazon and iTunes), and filters to support decision making. Some good quotes, :Walmarts shelves are a display case a mile wide and twenty-four inches deep. At first glance that may look like everything, but in a world that’s actually a mile wide and a mile deep, a veneer of variety just isn’t enough.” Why isn’t WKRP in Cincinnati out on DVD – licensing for all the classic rock that was fundamental to the TV show that can not be license for the DVD. Why is it so hard to find new releases on Netflicks. Because the Studios have a sliding scale on DVD prices that actually decrease by MONTH. So, $20+ in the first two months and sliding out to $10 by 18 months. Statistics – Average blockbuster store has 3K DVDs while NetFlicks has 60K. Average Borders has 100K books, while Amazon has 3.7M books. Walmart has 3500 CDs (or 55K songs) and Rhapsody has 1.5M songs. Internet retail is about 5% of American retail spending, but growing 25% per year. Another good point, with more options, you have a better chance to be more satisfied and also a better chance to be very unsatisfied. More options does mean more crap, but also more gems. Netflicks allows people who do not live in a university town to see foreign and independent films. (less)

2 likes · like · see review

Apr 11, 2008 Kip rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone with internet experience

One of the most interesting non-fiction books I've ever read. Sort of a combination of economics, technology, and culture. Anderson presents compelling arguments and data to identify, examine and extrapolate on a clear inflection point in the macro environment today. Tools of production are more readily available (think desktop publishing, blogging, and digital video), distribution is cheaper and more widely available (think Netflix, iTunes or Amazon v bricks-n-mortar), and a wide range of recom...more

1 like · like · see review

Feb 26, 2013 Dennis Venier rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads

This book or I should say comic is actually very witty, smart, and out there. From Anime to Youtube, Chris Anderson really captures everyone as an audience to show The Long Tail. Business is usually not the most interesting of topics and is difficult to express thoughts and ideas too but putting it in a comic format really did help me as a reader to see what he is talking about. I'm really glad I read this, it really opened my eyes towards the world of entertainment. I'm very glad I won this boo...more

1 like · like · see review

Oct 02, 2011 Jean Tessier added it · review of another edition

Shelves: leisure

I first heard about the idea of the Long Tail on my first day at Google, back in
2005. Four years later, I borrowed the book from work, out of curiosity. The
shorter commute and new friends on the train mean less time for reading, so this
one might take me a bit to get through.

I like the three requisites for capitalizing on a long tail market:

Democratize the means of production to generate a lot of content.
Means of distribution that are essentially free make that content available to everyone....more

like · see review

Oct 02, 2011 Jean Tessier added it · review of another edition

Shelves: leisure

I first heard about the idea of the Long Tail on my first day at Google, back in
2005. Four years later, I borrowed the book from work, out of curiosity. The
shorter commute and new friends on the train mean less time for reading, so this
one might take me a bit to get through.

I like the three requisites for capitalizing on a long tail market:

Democratize the means of production to generate a lot of content.
Means of distribution that are essentially free make that content available to everyone....more

like · see review

Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson offers a visionary look at the future of business and common culture. The long-tail phenomenon, he argues, will "re-shape our understanding of what people actually want to watch" (or read, etc.). While Anderson presents a fascinating idea backed by thoughtful (if repetitive) analysis, many critics questioned just how greatly the niche market will rework our common popular culture. Anderson convinced most reviewers in his discussion of Internet media sales, but hi

...more

like · see review

Jan 02, 2009 Howard Olsen rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is one of the best distillations of the trends in business and culture that the Internet has given rise to in the last 15 years. Anderson's basic thesis is that the instantaneous transmission of ideas and thoughts that the Internet allows has given rise to powerful niche cultures that are becoming as lucrative and pervasive as that which we would call mainstream culture. Music and books have been the most obvious beneficiaries of this, but any culture or product can find an audience on the...more

like · see review

Jan 15, 2013 Charles Allan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: economics

For decades, the marketplace revolved around strong demand and limited supply. This dynamic translated into the mass experience and the big hit. The long tail - that part of the graph line after the big hit spike, was uneconomical and difficult to pursue. Due to the realities of production and distribution, keeping niche products around was uneconomical.

Well, those days are gone.

Production is much cheaper and there's more supply. New models of distribution (as in one big national Internet store)...more

like · see review

Oct 25, 2012 Kislay Verma added it

From my review at SolomonSays:

The recurring theme in modern business literature is “power to the people”. Chris Anderson takes a hard look at what really happens when the technology provides nearly infinite efficiency to sellers and DIY tools to makers. The conclusion – more is merrier. For everyone.

The Long Tail begins with its biggest “Gotcha!” moment – a statistic that even with their vastly expanded inventories, online retailers are selling something of everything they have. The quantities d...more

like · see review

May 15, 2012 Thomas Vree rated it 4 of 5 stars

Got the comic version of this first, and enjoyed it enough to get the actual book.

Very interesting, deals with the idea that the internet has done away with the system of hits, and opened up a huge market of niches. That even if iTunes only sells one or two of each of the millions of tracks in its inventory per month or even year, that is still a huge number. Stores were previously restricted by physical space and could only carry a small number of books, records, what have you, and ones that th...more

like · see review

Apr 20, 2012 Aditi rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

Ok so I'd wanted to read this book for a while since it kept coming up in related searches on Amazon and Goodreads, so when I saw a second-hand copy I bought it. In this book, Anderson explores the Long Tail, a concept drawn from economics that features powerlaws and Pareto's 80-20 theory of distribution to analyse how the presence of internet based technologies are revolutionizing sales, entertainment and other forms of consumption in a choice-abundant world. He provides evidence from internet-...more

like · see review

Jun 12, 2011 John-Philip rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: paper-books-i-own, economics

When this was written, back in 2006, I can imagine it being highly interesting. Today I don't think most people would raise an eyebrow as the concept is so common: digital distribution is so cheap you can have an almost infinite amount of products in your catalog. So many in fact that even if you only sell one copy of each one the total sales from these "long tale products" adds up to a considerable increase inrevenuefor the company. Still it's very interesting. He still has some valid points th...more

like · see review

May 25, 2009 Brian Ayres rated it 4 of 5 stars

Chris Anderson's thesis -- market niches are taking over for mainstream cultural hits -- has been quickly reaching a crescendo since this book was published in 2006. Through this book and his blog by the same title, Anderson, editor of Wired, writes and explains the history of mass-market consumption in the 20th century and the seismic shift to personal consumption in the 21st century with ease. His thoughts and conclusions are hard to refute. To get a glimpse as to why the newspaper industry is...more

like · see review

Jun 08, 2012 Holmes rated it 5 of 5 stars

Let me start by saying something outrageous but heartfelt: I have never read a book on economics as inspiring as The Long Tail. But don't get me wrong - I'm not saying this book is in the league of those paradigm-shifting masterpieces such as Relativity and On the Origin of Species; I mean this book really makes me look more deeply into the potential power of the Internet. The Long Tail does not describe new economics; rather it describes (and predicts) how the Internet affects (and will affect)...more

like · see review

Jan 12, 2011 Jill rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sociology-anthropology, economics-and-finance

The central idea in Chris Anderson's The Long Tail is that the future of business isn't in the mainstream hits that, by virtue of their catering to the lowest common denominator, generate a large volume of business. Rather, the infinite "long tail" of options that cater to niche tastes represent a huge market cumulatively. Improvements in technology - to store, search and deliver - have created new business opportunities by driving demand down this long tail.

Like Nicholas Nassim Taleb's Black S...more The central idea in Chris Anderson's The Long Tail is that the future of business isn't in the mainstream hits that, by virtue of their catering to the lowest common denominator, generate a large volume of business. Rather, the infinite "long tail" of options that cater to niche tastes represent a huge market cumulatively. Improvements in technology - to store, search and deliver - have created new business opportunities by driving demand down this long tail.

Like Nicholas Nassim Taleb's Black Swan and James Surowiecki's Wisdom of Crowds, The Long Tail got people throwing around a new "buzz-phrase" just about every opportunity they could. I must admit to having been a little apprehensive when I first picked up The Long Tail, concerned that like the Wisdom of Crowds, it would belabour its thesis in a full-blown book, when a column in the New Yorker (or Wired magazine in Anderson's case) would suffice. But it turned out to be a fairly engaging read. Each chapter of the book wasn't just a rehashing of a single argument. Sure, Anderson does make some points repeatedly but it doesn't come across as tired and belaboured, in contrast to The Wisdom of Crowds.

The first two chapters introduce the idea of the long tail and why focussing on the mass market and mainstream hits used to make sense. Chapter Three talks about how the idea of driving demand down the tail isn't a new concept; Sears did it with its catalogues in the late 1800s. It's just that we're now driving demand further down the tail than we ever thought possible/viable, where sales are numbered in single digits. Democratization of the tools of production - to let anyone produce a film/record/encyclopedia entry, the development of platforms to aggregate these myriad offerings (Alibris, Rhapsody), powerful search technologies to sieve through these offerings; all these factors have combined to change the economics of doing business. Chapter Nine discusses the world of the "short head" - as exemplified by store shelves that can display only so many products - and the challenges it presents both retailers and consumers, before the last few chapters outline the possibilities of the long tail. Amazon, Alibris, EBay, Rhapsody, Netflix are the usual suspects. Who would have thought of the long tail of kitchen mixers (KitchenAid), or the long tail of Lego, or rice pudding (Rice to Riches). I can't wait to see what other long tails will be tapped next. (less)

like · see review

Feb 19, 2012 David A. rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm a fan of Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail--even though, to my knowledge, he's never gotten a penny of my money. I read occasional issues of Wired magazine, where he's editor in chief, when I see it on the magazine rack in our office library. I downloaded his super-interesting Free as an ebook when he was giving it away, for free. And while I've been talking with coworkers and other publishing industry people for years about Anderson's ideas in The Long Tail (c. 2006), I didn't actuall...more I'm a fan of Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail--even though, to my knowledge, he's never gotten a penny of my money. I read occasional issues of Wired magazine, where he's editor in chief, when I see it on the magazine rack in our office library. I downloaded his super-interesting Free as an ebook when he was giving it away, for free. And while I've been talking with coworkers and other publishing industry people for years about Anderson's ideas in The Long Tail (c. 2006), I didn't actually stop to read it till it showed up this month on the free table where I work. What can I say--I'm a moocher, and it's easy to not have to pay Chris Anderson for his stuff.

Anyway, The Long Tail is in many ways the perfect book for me to read in this, my Year of Overdue Books. It has direct bearing on the work I do, acquiring and developing books in the publishing industry, which is as much as if not more in flux than it was when Anderson was writing this book. It's also horribly dated--MySpace has eight index page entries, while Facebook has none; and ebooks for Anderson circa 2006 are a non-thing, whereas now, just six years later, they're the thing that will either save us or destroy us. And yet it's still an important book to read for a couple of reasons:

1. It challenges the deep-seated and self-reinforcing assumption that hits drive the economy, and so all resources must be mustered perpetually for the next big hit (say, Lady Gaga), to the sacrifice of the "misses" or "losers" or "also-rans" or whatever derogatory term we assign to the nonhits among us.

2. It points to (although it doesn't deliver entirely) a strategy for capitalizing on the abundance of nonhits that in reality buttress the economy and, in the new prodigal age, have the potential to be the main drivers of any business success.

Anderson argues that the Internet age has caused a shift in the economy from scarcity (cut-throat competition for limited time, money and other resources) to abundance. Today the cost of manufacturing pretty much anything is being perpetually shrunk (although that's as much to do with exploitation of workers in a global economy as it is to technological improvements). Meanwhile, everyone with Internet access has the world at their fingertips, and in the post-2006 development of the smartphone, in their pockets. I use the Shazam app, for example, pretty much every day to identify a song on the radio or the Internet that was never a hit but is clearly appealing; as a result I've been able to discover b-side and album cuts from classic artists like David Bowie and John Lennon, as well as new songs by artists who haven't been given the hit-nod by the old-school mainstream music industry, such as Half-Handed Cloud and the Avett Brothers.

Of course, I'm hearing these songs, which means that they're getting played, which seems to refute Anderson's thesis. But remember that this is six years down the road from publication of The Long Tail and eleven years since the launch of iTunes, which Anderson writes has sold every song it carries at least once. Industries are already acting on the premise of the Long Tail; indeed, we had long tails long before Anderson pointed them out to us. What's principally different is the rise of bits and the decline of atoms--the shift to digital content and products and corresponding abandonment of the necessarily limited capacity of brick-and-mortar stores, three-shift factories and human consumption. All these have been solved (or, maybe better, problematized) by digital technologies. We can buy things from virtual stores; in increasing cases they come to us not as physical products off a truck but as pieces of data instantly transmitted; and human consumers can effortlessly translate every curiosity, every impulse, into an instant purchase. Toward the end of the book Anderson describes a printer you can buy that pulls data from the Internet and "prints" it as a physical product. That doesn't sound novel now (though it most certainly did way back in 2006), but think of the implications: as Anderson puts it, "Today you print your own photographs at home; tomorrow you may print the frame, too" (p. 226).

The Long Tail feels to me a bit long in the tooth. Anderson repeats himself here and there throughout; his book Free is a much more systematic presentation of some overlapping content about the declining costs of production and the implications thereof for selling. But the main thing here is hope: in the transition from scarcity to abundance in the global economy, the power is shifting from the supplier to the consumer, and the supplier's role is shifting as well, from baronic doler of content and materials to wise guide and creative bandleader. In an economy of abundance, producers and sellers have the responsibility and opportunity to do more, not less.

(less)

like · see review

Dec 03, 2009 Jonny99 rated it 3 of 5 stars

Chris Anderson proposes that due to the declining reliance on physical retail stores and warehouses money will be made in the future as much from niche products as hits. As evidence he points to music and books where selling a narrow sliver of hits among tens of thousands of misses kept retailers in business until Rhapsody and Amazon found that there is perhaps an additional 50% additional market selling onesy-twosy to people with very uncommon interests. These retail changes mesh with larger so...more

like · see review

Nov 23, 2012 Ferry rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Long Tail adalah penjelasan PALUGADA (Apa Loe Mau Gue Ada) Internet. Disajikan dalam bentuk komik, penjelasan mengenai konsep ini jadi mudah dipahami. Produk2 box office bersaing dengan produk2 tidak terkenal yang berjumlah tak terbatas. Hasilnya adalah keseimbangan pasar. Pilihan yang tidak terbatas menciptakan permintaan tak terbatas. Apa yang menyebabkan hal ini? 1. demokratisasi sarana produksi (siapa saja bisa menjadi penulis/artis); 2. demokratisasi distribusi (siapa saja bisa mendistr...more

like · see review

Nov 27, 2011 Amy Strickland rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is a graphic novel adaptation of Chris Anderson's already acclaimed business book, The Long Tail. The book carefully explains the concept of the long tail, breaking down the history and projecting the future of commerce on the web. Anderson does a great job explaining the benefit and challenge to the consumer, the aggregator, and the producer.

Chris Anderson does not promise a get-rich-quick future for content producers, but instead reveals the rise in opportunity for grass-roots hits....more

like · see review

Jul 03, 2009 Isk rated it 3 of 5 stars

Review:

Summary:
The Internet has ended the economics of scarcity by cheaply enabling the distribution and acquisition of niche items.

Example:

Read:
The Wired article, and then just Chapter 15: The long tail of marketing from this book.

Improvements:
Wish Anderson talked about differentiating between long tail-industries and non-long tail-industries, and how to boost long tails when there should be one but there isn't. Also, what a world would be like in which everything is long tail.

Notes:

Introductio...more

like · see review

Jan 07, 2013 Alkek Library rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: economics

For decades, the marketplace revolved around strong demand and limited supply. This dynamic translated into the mass experience and the big hit. The long tail - that part of the graph line after the big hit spike, was uneconomical and difficult to pursue. Due to the realities of production and distribution, keeping niche products around was uneconomical.

Well, those days are gone.

Production is much cheaper and there's more supply. New models of distribution (as in one big national Internet store)...more

like · see review

Jan 20, 2012 Henk-Jan van der Klis rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: marketing, e-business

Ik kon er natuurlijk niet omheen Chris Anderson's The Long Tail zelf ook te lezen. De in het boek beschreven inzichten maken duidelijk waarom ondernemingen als Google, Lego, Amazon en iTunes zo'n succes zijn, en waarom bijvoorbeeld de gevestigde muziek- en filmindustrie zo'n moeite heeft met de 21e eeuw. In het tijdperk van de Long Tail zijn er 6 thema's:[return][return] 1. in bijna alle markten zijn er veel meer nichegoederen dan hits. Het verhoudingsgetal wordt snel hoger als de productiegoede...more Ik kon er natuurlijk niet omheen Chris Anderson's The Long Tail zelf ook te lezen. De in het boek beschreven inzichten maken duidelijk waarom ondernemingen als Google, Lego, Amazon en iTunes zo'n succes zijn, en waarom bijvoorbeeld de gevestigde muziek- en filmindustrie zo'n moeite heeft met de 21e eeuw. In het tijdperk van de Long Tail zijn er 6 thema's:[return][return] 1. in bijna alle markten zijn er veel meer nichegoederen dan hits. Het verhoudingsgetal wordt snel hoger als de productiegoederen goedkoper of beter verkrijgbaar zijn.[return] 2. de kosten om de niches te bereiken, dalen sterk. Dankzij digitale distributie, goede zoekmachines en een kritieke massa aan breedbandverbindingen is The World Flat om Friedman te parafraseren.[return] 3. Filters duwen de vraag verder omlaag langs de Tail.[return] 4. Er zijn zoveel nicheproducten dat deze met elkaar een markt vormen die concurreert met die van de hits.[return] 5. Een long Tail is eigenlijk een cultuur zonder schaarste. [return][return]Drie krachten doen Long Tails ontstaan:[return][return] 1. democratisering van productiemiddelen[return] 2. democtatisering van distributie[return] 3. aanbod en vraag worden bij elkaar gebracht[return][return]Anders gesteld ligt het geheim van een Long Tail onderneming in 2 noodzakelijkheden:[return][return] 1. zorg dat alles vindbaar is[return] 2. maak het vindbaar[return][return]Negen regels kunnen succesvolle Long Tail ondernemingen aanhouden:[return][return] 1. haal assortiment naar binen...of doe het de deur uit[return] 2. laat klanten het werk doen (wikinomics, user generated content, crowd sourcing)[return] 3. één manier van distribueren is niet genoeg[return] 4. één productvariant is niet genoeg[return] 5. één prijs is niet genoeg[return] 6. informatie delen[return] 7. denk'en', niet 'of'[return] 8. vertrouw op de markt[return] 9. onderken het belang van 'gratis'.[return][return][return]Dat Chris Anderson 240 pagina's nodig heeft om deze bottomline uit te werken, is enerzijds goed voor zijn eigen omzet, maar had voor mij in de helft gekund, inclusief alle voorbeelden en infographics. The Long Tail herhaalt vaak en meestal zonder toegevoegde waarde op de eerder beschreven stellingnamen. Onbenoemd blijven markten, sectoren of productlijnen die zich wellicht minder goed lenen voor Long Tail succesverhalen. Achteraf is immers alles verklaarbaar, en zo is The Long Tail meer een economieboek dan een managementboek.(less)

like · see review

May 05, 2009 Daniel Solera rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: business-economics

Chris Anderson's book can be summarized by saying that the consumer retail market these days is driven more by a bottom-up movement (what he calls "post-filters") than by top-down factors ("pre-filters"). The idea can also be synthesized by saying that "hits" are no longer as big as they once were because they now compete with individuals with louder voices.

For example, during its most popular seasons, "I Love Lucy" was watched by 70 percent of households with televisions. That kind of homogeniz...more

like · see review

Apr 06, 2011 Bojan Tunguz rated it 5 of 5 stars

Chris Anderson is an editor-in-chief of the Wired magazine, and the eponymous article 'The Long Tail' appeared in that magazine a couple of years ago. This has been one of the most influential and read articles about the 'new economy', and rightfully so. In a few succinct principles it describes and explains the essential aspect of the several new successful business models, including Google, Amazon, eBay, Netflix, to name just a few. The basic mechanisms behind the model, however, have been aro...more

like · see review

Jan 18, 2010 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: numbers

I thought this was an excellent book because it was about exactly the kind of thing I'm interested in, especially in terms of the type of industry I'd like to be in. Anderson writes in a way that makes the information interesting to even those that may not be quite as excited about the book as I was going in. I think it would make an very good and very appropriate book for a business/technology college course.

That said, I do agree with some of the other reviewers that it gets somewhat repetitive...more

like · see review

Jun 24, 2012 Nick rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended by John Sutherland in _How Literature Works_ as providing a solution for dealing with information overload. I was a little surprised to find myself reading a book about marketing but the combination of an interesting concept and light tone (plus many many hours of subway riding) kept me reading through to the last page. Said interesting concept got much less interesting as the book wore on and I found myself reading more to see where Anderson would finally slip up and say, 'Okay, I a...more Recommended by John Sutherland in _How Literature Works_ as providing a solution for dealing with information overload. I was a little surprised to find myself reading a book about marketing but the combination of an interesting concept and light tone (plus many many hours of subway riding) kept me reading through to the last page. Said interesting concept got much less interesting as the book wore on and I found myself reading more to see where Anderson would finally slip up and say, 'Okay, I admit that there might not actually be a good way for publishers to make boatloads of money off of the internet'. Of course, said publishers make up a big chunk of Anderson's potential market for this book (not to mention the audience for _Wired_). Doctorow published a great review of this book in the Guardian and seems to do a solid job of targeting the major logical fallacy of (near) zero distribution costs, namely that when the cost to deliver a product per customer drops to (near) zero the whole model breaks down because who's going to pay something for nothing? Ebooks are great for authors, but not so much for publishers and retailers.
The tip for dealing with information overload that Sutherland gleaned from this book, such as I was able to understand it was that websites like GoodReads, LibraryThing, Amazon, etc can use the books you've already read to come up with recommendations based on what people similar to you have read, helping you explore 'the tail' (the 80 percent of literature that is not in the mainstream canon): "The 'long tail' approach did not seem to mean keeping within frontiers (like narcotic genre-followers) but mapping out whole new, but not dauntingly large, territories, as a kind of mosaic of freshly discovered discrimination...a gigantic smorgasbord in which the onus was on the skill, and idiosyncrasy, of the consumer, no two of whom would pile their plates identically." Sutherland seems to see Anderson's point of view as being a little overly optimistic, because he points out that picking out food at a buffet is a lot different from dealing with a 'deluge' of information. The implication that the average person can eat on their own but needs someone to pick their books for them is more than a little patronizing. Certainly, there's a lot of fluff that sells out there, but who's to say what's fluff to me is fluff to you?
I think you _are_ seeing more and more small press publishers, like Small Beer Press, Soft Skull, McSweeney's etc, who represent smaller and smaller niche markets which may or may not be based on genre but work by creating small, overlapping 'tribes' of readers, not unlike what has happened in music over the past decade. At the same time, there is more and more room now for random outliers to pick up a huge readership and blow everyone out of the water with a record-breaking Kickstarter fund raising drive. Pre-selling and teaching seems like the way of the future for authors, which may seem a little depressing, but I can't say it's any worse than being forced to sell yourself to a publisher just to get your name out there. The big guys are going to get a lot smaller before all this is over, though, which I can't say I think is all that much of a bad thing.(less)

like · see review

Jan 29, 2013 Heather Browning rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

I wouldn't have considered myself particularly interested in economics, or whatever this book falls under exactly, but I loved it. My only complaint may be that, given how simple the main point was, that the rest of the book felt somewhat like filler - examples and clarifications. However, I never found myself bored, the examples were all interesting and the writing style was clear and conversational. I found myself encouraged to 'surf the long tail' and start looking for more niche products/ser...more

like · see review

Mar 22, 2009 Heidi Cullinan rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is hands down one of the most fascinating and enlightening books about the emerging new business model I've ever read. It's written by the editor of Wired magazine, and he also has a blog, both of which I recommend as well.

The general idea of The Long Tail is that there is a lot more business to be done past the point where traditional business models cut off the tail for sales and services, especially in the age of the internet. Long tail business models mean more variety for consumer...more

like · see review

topics	posts	views	last activity
Dalian Fortune Re...: China's economic transformation \| dalian fortune research news blog	2	2	Apr 26, 2013 10:57pm
Tyler Group Barcelona Relations: Spain’s Economic Crisis Inspires Young Professionals to Launch Startups	2	6	Mar 10, 2013 11:25pm

title link	preview: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
avg rating	preview: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More Goodreads rating: 3.83 (9099 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2574.The_Long_Tail?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347718954l/2574.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2574.The_Long_Tail?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson[/url]

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (44)

Genres

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Chris Anderson

Books by Chris Anderson

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About The Long Tail: Wh...

Quotes from The Long Tail: Why the...