The Long Tail Quotes

“as Joe Kraue, CEA of JotSpot ... puts it, "Up until now, the focus has been on dozens of markets of millions, instead of millions of markets of dozens.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

“When the tools of production are available to everyone, everyone becomes a producer.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“In fact, as these companies offered more and more (simply because they could), they found that demand actually followed supply. The act of vastly increasing choice seemed to unlock demand for that choice. Whether it was latent demand for niche goods that was already there or a creation of new demand, we don't yet know. But what we do know is that the companies for which we have the most complete data - netflix, Amazon, Rhapsody - sales of products not offered by their bricks-and-mortar competitors amounted to between a quarter and nearly half of total revenues - and that percentage is rising each year. in other words, the fastest-growing part of their businesses is sales of products that aren't available in traditional, physical retail stores at all.

These infinite-shelf-space businesses have effectively learned a lesson in new math: A very, very big number (the products in the Tail) multiplied by a relatives small number (the sales of each) is still equal to a very, very big number. And, again, that very, very big number is only getting bigger.

What's more, these millions of fringe sales are an efficient, cost-effective business. With no shelf space to pay for - and in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees - a niche product sold is just another sale, with the same (or better) margins as a hit. For the first time in history, hits and niches are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

“In a world of infinite choice, context—not content—is king.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“For too long we’ve been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching—a market response to inefficient distribution.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“Diamonds can be found anywhere.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“A few years ago, most of these authors wouldn’t have been published at all—and that would have been enough to discourage many of them from writing a book in the first place. But today, the economics of publishing have fallen so low that nearly everyone can do it. That means people can write books for whatever reason they want, and they don’t need to depend on some publisher deciding if the book is worth taking to market. The effect of this is being felt throughout the industry, right up to the giant booksellers. In 2005, Barnes & Noble sold 20 percent more unique titles than it had in 2004, something its CEO, Steve Riggio, attributes to three forces: (1) the efficiencies of print-on-demand, which keeps more books in print; (2) the increase in the number of smaller and independent publishers; and (3) self-publishing.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“What we're now starting to see, as online retailers begin to capitalize on their extraordinary economic efficiences, is the shape of a massive mountain of choice emerging where before there was just a peak.... By necessity, the conomics of traditional, hit-driven retail limit choice. When you dramatically lower the costs of connecting supply and demand, it changes not just the numbers, but the entire nature of the market. This is not just a quantiative change, but a qualitative one, too. Bringing niches within reach reveals latent demand for noncommercial content. Then, as demand shifts toward the niches, the economics of provided them improve further, and so on, creating a positive feedback loop that will transform entire industries - and the culture - for decades to come.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

“With the evolution of online retail, however, has come the revelation that being able to recategorize and rearrange products on the fly unlocks their real value.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“A physical store cannot be reconfigured on the fly to cater to each customer based on his or her particular interests.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“ninety percent of everything is crud.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“The secret to creating a thriving Long Tail business can be summarized in two imperatives: Make everything available. Help me find it.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“At Google’s first shareholders meeting, CEO Eric Schmidt elaborated on why he describes Google’s mission as “serving the Long Tail.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“Just as consumers flocked to the Internet despite the hiccups of dial-up modems and clunky Web pages, they will flock to this new medium that empowers them in ways that no single company or industry can replicate. They will come to forget that their relationship to video programming used to be mediated by a black box connected to their TV set, and instead will enjoy the same degree of freedom that they have in consuming and using the text Web from any personal computer. Most importantly, the massive economies of scale and reach that the Internet already provides will extend to the realm of video production, where producing and self-distributing a video program is nearly as effortless as producing a Web site, and where millions of new producers and programmers are born.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“Today, whether you’re the New York Times or a blog, you can put a couple lines of HTML code on your site and it will display Google ads—targeted to whatever content you’re providing. Again, it’s self-service: no permission or phone call required. Every time an ad is clicked on, the advertiser pays Google, and Google passes some of the money on to you. Google doesn’t care whether you’re a professional or an amateur, or how narrow or broad your content may be.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“In late 2005, Salesforce was the first to launch a Long Tail software marketplace on its platform. Third-party developers could write a targeted niche application (focused on performance reviews or recruiting, for example) and it would run on Salesforce’s servers, integrating with Salesforce’s other software. The hope was that hundreds or even thousands of small developers would meet all the specialized needs of Sales-force’s customers, allowing Salesforce to concentrate on the more common needs. In other words, the tail would reinforce the head. By early 2006, there were more than two hundred applications selling on the marketplace, and Benioff confirms that the shape of the sales curves is just as predicted. “Even I was stunned,” he says. “It’s a perfect Long Tail. Textbook!”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.” —David Foster Wallace”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“On the other hand, think about a world of ad-hoc organization, determined by whatever makes sense at the time. That’s more like a big pile of stuff on a desk instead of rows of items stringently arranged on shelves. Sure it may seem messy, but that’s just because it’s a different kind of organization: spontaneous, contextual order, easily reordered into a different context as need be. That image is a little bit like the Web itself, seen through Google’s lens: a world of infinite variety and little predetermined order; a world of dynamic structure, shaped differently for each observer.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“Bottles of wine cannot be magically rearranged to suit the results of a search. They cannot be popped onto the next shelf to optimize the probability that people like you who bought aged Gouda and black olives might also like this Pinot. Atoms are stubborn this way.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“Those retailers are simply fated to live in the inflexible world of racks and aisles, where products must obey the uncompromising physics of atoms, not bits. One of those unfortunate rules of corporeal matter is that it cannot transcend time and space. Obviously, a physical item can be in only one place at any given time. For instance, a can of tuna cannot exist simultaneously in multiple categories, even though the interests and browsing paths of each shopper might suggest many: “fish,” “canned food,” “sandwich makings,” “low-fat,” “on sale,” “best-selling,” “back-to-school,” “under $2,” and so on. A physical store cannot be reconfigured on the fly to cater to each customer based on his or her particular interests.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“in his book The Rise of the Creative Class, puts it, “the world is spiky”: People cluster not simply because they like to be around one another or they prefer cosmopolitan centers with lots of amenities, though both those things count. They and their companies also cluster because of the powerful productivity advantages, economies of scale, and knowledge spillovers such density brings. Ideas flow more freely, are honed more sharply, and can be put into practice more quickly when large numbers of innovators, implementers, and financial backers are in constant contact with one another, both in and out of the office.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“As this figure shows, a once-monolithic industry structure where professionals produced and amateurs consumed is now a two-way marketplace, where anyone can be in any camp at any time. This”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“From filmmakers to bloggers, producers of all sorts that start in the Tail with few expectations of commercial success can afford to take chances. They’re willing to take more risks, because they have less to lose. There’s no need for permission, a business plan, or even capital. The tools of creativity are now cheap, and talent is more widely distributed than we know.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“A few years ago, most of these authors wouldn’t have been published at all—and that would have been enough to discourage many of them from writing a book in the first place. But today, the economics of publishing have fallen so low that nearly everyone can do it. That means people can write books for whatever reason they want, and they don’t need to depend on some publisher deciding if the book is worth taking to market. The effect of this is being felt throughout the industry, right up to the giant booksellers. In 2005, Barnes & Noble sold 20 percent more unique titles than it had in 2004, something its CEO, Steve Riggio, attributes to three forces: (1) the efficiencies of print-on-demand, which keeps more books in print; (2) the increase in the number of smaller and independent publishers; and (3) self-publishing. “Over the next few years, the traditional definition of what a 'published book' is will have less meaning,” he says. “Individuals will increasingly use the Internet as a first stage to publish their work, whether they are books, short stories, works in progress, or articles on their area of expertise. The best of this work will turn into physical books. I tend to be sanguine about the book industry’s prospects because a whole new and efficient means of first-step publishing is emerging and rapidly becoming more sophisticated.” One of the big differences between the head and the tail of producers is that the farther down you are in the tail, the more likely you are to have to keep your day job. And that’s okay. The distinction between “professional” producers and “amateurs” is blurring and may, in fact, ultimately become irrelevant. We make not just what we’re paid to make, but also what we want to make. And both can have value.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“Over the next few years, the traditional definition of what a 'published book' is will have less meaning,” he says. “Individuals will increasingly use the Internet as a first stage to publish their work, whether they are books, short stories, works in progress, or articles on their area of expertise. The best of this work will turn into physical books. I tend to be sanguine about the book industry’s prospects because a whole new and efficient means of first-step publishing is emerging and rapidly becoming more sophisticated.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“This is the world of “peer production,” the extraordinary Internet-enabled phenomenon of mass volunteerism and amateurism. We are at the dawn of an age where most producers in any domain are unpaid, and the main difference between them and their professional counterparts is simply the (shrinking) gap in the resources available to them to extend the ambition of their work. When the tools of production are available to everyone, everyone becomes a producer.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“Author Paul Graham puts it like this: The Web naturally has a certain grain, and Google is aligned with it. That’s why their success seems so effortless. They’re sailing with the wind, instead of sitting becalmed praying for a business model, like the print media, or trying to tack upwind by suing their customers, like Microsoft and the record labels. Google doesn’t try to force things to happen their way. They try to figure out what’s going to happen, and arrange to be standing there when it does.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“Wales started with a few dozen prewritten articles and a software application called a Wiki (named for the Hawaiian word meaning “quick” or “fast”), which allows anybody with Web access to go to a site and edit, delete, or add to what’s there. The ambition: Nothing less than to construct a repository of knowledge to rival the ancient library of Alexandria. This was, needless to say, controversial. For one thing, this is not how encyclopedias are supposed to be made. From the beginning, compiling authoritative knowledge has been the job of scholars. It started with a few solo polymaths who dared to try the impossible. In ancient Greece, Aristotle single-handedly set out to record all the knowledge of his time. Four hundred years later, the Roman nobleman Pliny the Elder cranked out a thirty-seven-volume set of the day’s knowledge. The Chinese scholar Tu Yu wrote an encyclopedia on his own in the ninth century. And in the 1700s, Diderot and a few of his pals (including Voltaire and Rousseau) took twenty-nine years to create the Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Metiers.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“DEMOCRATIZING THE TOOLS OF PRODUCTION What’s new about this is the way it’s done, not the concept itself. Indeed, Karl Marx was perhaps the original prophet of the Pro-Am economy. As Demos notes, “In The German Ideology, written between 1845 and 1847, Marx maintained that labor—forced, unspontaneous and waged work—would be superseded by self-activity.“ Eventually, he hoped, there would be a time when ”material production leaves every person surplus time for other activities.“ Marx”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“There will always remain a division of labor between professionals and amateurs. But it may be more difficult to tell the two groups apart in the future.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More