The digital age has thrown a curve ball at traditional economic theory. Disrupting the institutionalized notion that economics is about choice under scarcity, the Internet has introduced economists to a world of abundance.

Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail examines the non-traditional markets that emerge when people are faced with abundance and infinite selection. This model allows the public to deviate from the accepted norm of being fed "hits" that are corporately designed for mass-appeal. Anderson's Long Tail theory proves that by opening the door for consumers to access niche choices and tools of creation, the Internet has unveiled a means of "turning unprofitable customers, products, and markets into profitable ones" (p. 11). The Long Tail refers to the market share that is made attainable by the Internet's introduction of "abundant shelf space, abundant distribution, and abundant choice" (p. 143).

In The Long Tail, Anderson effectively presents engaging ideas that are muted only by the book's sometimes-scattered structure. Anderson uses real-world examples to make his points, leads readers to evaluate their own consumer habits, and upholds the context that the Long Tail is part of a bigger picture. At times Anderson is redundant, and the book lacks the guidance of a defined genre, but compared to The Long Tail's strong overall message, the points of contention are minimal.

Using real-world examples, Anderson effectively teaches readers how the digital age is empowering formerly complaisant consumers to control what is popular. Anderson gives examples of musicians who made it big without record label support and were able to "record and distribute their music themselves and keep their creative independence" (p. 106) and actors who developed enormous fan bases and reached stardom by posting their skits online. By citing such examples, Anderson illustrates to readers that aspiring artists no longer need to wait for a big break from entertainment industry executives; "technology has shifted the balance of power from label to band" (p. 106). Anderson also uses a real-world example to show readers that when a company broadens its selection of items it will learn from the customer what is popular: "Until KitchenAid had an online channel that allowed customers to pick from its full range of products, it had no way of knowing that there was latent consumer demand [for orange mixers] that it hadn't previously tapped" (p. 205).

The author's real-world proof that consumers can influence industries leads readers to evaluate their own position in corporate-to-consumer relationships. The Long Tail model causes readers to think twice about supporting broad-appeal-based businesses that offer limited selections. Readers may ask: Why should I settle for mainstream when I can get just what I want elsewhere? Both consumers and producers can leverage the Long Tail of niche markets to their own advantage. Anderson notes that while abundance of selection grants consumers the power of choice, businesses are reaping the revenue benefits of the Tail: "the numbers are so large that you can lop off a large chunk (the hits) and it's still a huge market" (p. 215).

Anderson does a good job of reminding the reader of the context from which the Long Tail should be viewed; it is one splice of a larger market. He appropriately notes that while there is a significant subculture market to be captured in the Long Tail, the head of hits should not be disregarded. It is hard to side with writers such as Anita Elberse of the Harvard Business Review who seem to misconstrue the Long Tail concept as promoting tail-only business; Anderson explicitly states that "successful Long Tail aggregators need to have both hits and niches" (p. 148). He cites the importance of both ends, using Google as an example: "most of its revenues come from the head of the curve, [but] most of its customers are somewhere in the tail, which suggests that this is where much of its growth will come in the future" (p. 215).

While the educational and thought-provoking merits of The Long Tail are significant, Anderson nonetheless introduces two challenges to his readers. The first challenge lies in the mid-section of the book, wherein Anderson is unnecessarily redundant and risks losing the reader's attention. Page 146 would make an excellent last page, as it nicely summarizes and connects what has been read. Although there is some good content interspersed in the redundancy, Chapter 9 (page 147) would make a nice start for The Long Tail: Part Two, as it restates what was in Part I. Page 155 revisits big box retailers, page 164 tells the reader again that there are limitations in airwaves, and goes on to recount what makes a hit. Ironically, in his WIRED Magazine article, "Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business," Anderson states that in a world of abundance attention is the new scarcity to be vied for. A more concise, well-organized edition of the book would be more apt to engage the scarcity of attention.

The second challenge is that the book lacks a genre. Anderson admits "I tremble to think where the Dewey Decimal System will place the book you're reading now. Technology? Economics? Business? Culture? None of them are quite right by themselves" (p. 161). For the reader, not knowing what The Long Tail was written for hinders enjoyment and slows the reading process. It is challenging to decipher if the book is meant to be read as a textbook from which statistics ought to be memorized, or as a breezy read that offers ideas that will be fun to share at cocktail parties. Anderson finds single-genre classifications to be limiting, since "one thing can be many different things to many different people" (p. 161). However, he overlooks that a genre can be of more use than just determining where to physically or digitally store/categorize the book. Genres can also provide readers a useful context from which to read. The burden of figuring out the genre of The Long Tail is a hurdle for the reader.

As Professor Kathy Gill of the University of Washington notes, this is the "Wild West" of the digital age. In this Wild West, Anderson pulls together the elements and implications of a previously unattainable Long Tail market to bring meaning to this burgeoning area that is still being defined. Despite a few points of contention, The Long Tail does an excellent job of introducing and addressing today's changing economy and leads readers to evaluate the economic role they play.

A writer who I follow avidly is the New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell, who for a decade now has successfully analyzed and explained the bleeding obvious. But he does so in a fluid and entertaining manner, which is what mostly accounts for his success.

A few years ago Mr. Gladwell wrote a book called "The Tipping Point," which went on to become a publishing phenomenon. In it he explained how certain products become phenomena. First, someone creates the product or comes up with the idea. Second, someone packages it properly so that it's something that resonates with people. Third, someone discovers it and enthusiastically promotes it until its sales or notoriety reaches "a tipping point," and once it crosses this threshold the idea or product becomes a cultural phenomenon.

A lot of readers enjoyed the book and found it "empowering" because they fundamentally misunderstood it. For them it meant that if they worked hard enough and had the proper skill-set they could sell their products and be successful. But "The Tipping Point" showed how important chance and randomness were in products and ideas becoming successful and mainstream -- different people working at different times re-working and re-marketing an idea or a product before the product obtains that magical combination of utility, relevance, and buzz. It's a very much organic, natural, and social process -- where no one or no group is completely in control.

In that way Malcolm Gladwell's contribution was not coming up with a new idea but in framing a well-known cultural phenomenon.

Likewise with Chris Anderson's "The Long Tail." Instead of telling us anything new he's helping us frame our understanding of the Internet and digital age.

We know the Internet is a revolutionary tool that has empowered consumers with more choice and information than ever before, has made the production and distribution of products cheaper than before, and is radically challenging the dominance of traditional media and bricks-and-mortars retailers. We know that Internet retailers -- such as Amazon, Ebay, and Google -- have different revenue and business models than Walmart, Target, and Barnes & Noble. The Internet has also fundamentally changed consumer behavior: instead of waiting for prime time consumers now watch want they want to watch when they want to watch it. What Chris Anderson has done is frame all this in a concept called "The Long Tail."

What "The Long Tail" means is that given the diversity of individual tastes the number of movies and books that consumers could potentially want to buy is almost infinite. Unfortunately the resources of traditional retailers like Walmart is very finite -- because of limited shelf space Walmart has to choose books and DVDs that have the most consumer appeal. But web-based retailers like Amazon have infinite shelf space so they can offer consumers more choice, and consumers embrace choice.

That in a nutshell is what the "The Long Tail" is about, and to justify turning his magazine article of the same name into a book Chris Anderson offers lots of examples and cases studies of "The Long Tail" in action but mainly just waxes eloquent on how the Internet has empowered people: Thanks to the miracle of cheap digital technology young kids who don't want to work but just want to be famous can make their own movies, and make their friends and parents buy it over the Internet.

Too much boasting and boosting and not enough analyzing and criticizing is yet another similarity between "The Long Tail" and "The Tipping Point." Both are also magazine articles that have been for marketing purposes turned into books.

Ultimately, both books sell a gimmicky concept that doesn't really enhance our understanding of the world.

Anderson's TV appearance on Charlie Rose induced me to read his Wired column which interested me in his book; all part of the long tail of information and connectivity in this new Internet age. Mixing an equal blend of statistics, charts and commentary, Anderson uses Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Netflix and other new age entities in describing the revolution in the buyers' entertainment options and our thirst for choice. The ancien regime of filtering news, opinion, entertainment, consumer buying choices is dead, according to Anderson. As revealing as "The World is Flat" by Tom Friedman, this book describes like no other the new age of niche selection, user choice and the shifted sands of our preferences as a plugged in society.

This is a very informative book and helps one to understand the logic behind online retailers. I learned about the "long tail" topic during my graduate studies and had the opportunity to read Chris Anderson's book on the entire topic. I decided to take this opportunity to explore the topic in greater detail and found the book to be very insightful and intuitive. The book explains all the things scholars are inclined to believe and helps us to put everything else into perspective. Mr. Anderson gives insight into industry terminology (i.e. "watercooler effect") to help communicate certain phenomena and to give the concept definition. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to explore and learn from such a magnificent author and educator. With all that I have learned from the text, I plan to utilize its contents in the "real world" to help others understand its implications for the future in retail.

PROS: Well written, fluid prose, clear headers guide the reader, useful observations on how the Internet has changed many industries, excellent for the business reader and entrepreneur.

CONS: Although the author generally writes in a concise writing style (which is nice), the book could be even shorter. Indeed, it grew out of a Wired article.

CONCLUSION: The reason I didn't give it 5 stars is that I wasn't left amazed and blown away. It's a nice book. Well written and researched. Get it if you're an entrepreneur or you love to read how the Net disrupts industries. If you're only moderately interested in these subjects, then just read the Wired article and/or the user comments on this book.

Where do I start?

I was really looking forward to reading "The Long Tail". I believe if I read "The World Is Flat" after I read this book, I would enjoy it more. After reading the Friedman book, and seeing the mostly recycled studies and facts Anderson uses here to justify his argument, I feel like I was reading the same book all over again. Ditto on Wikinomics, but I digress.

Here's the real problem with this book: There is a major assumption on Anderson's part that regular people like you and I can create content and sell it. Even if its bad, someone will buy it. Maybe, but no where does Anderson or any of these web futurists ever touch on how to fund such productions (and the fact that most of us will never be able to afford participating in the new web economy.) All this book really does is fuel an Internet gold rush, all the while making authors like Anderson rich for selling us a bill of goods and Silicon dreams.

Nutshell review - A good concept, insight, idea but too much fluff, examples, case studies, etc. Could have been written in a tenth of the pages (but where's the margin in that?).

A good concept, insight, idea but too much fluff, examples, case studies, etc. Could have been written in a tenth of the pages (but where's the margin in that?).

Excellent. Shines light on a fascinating concept. Offer growth potential for hundreds of fields. Samuel R Daines II.

Smart, relevant, and on point, this book is a good read for anyone interested in the evolution of product valuing and Internet-based business modeling. Part social and cultural review, part business process review, it speaks to how gone are the days of company driven, long-lasting big hits, which where primarily created from limited availability of information about people and entertainment products. The digital world of the Internet has created microcosms of connoisseurs who are reshaping what's considered popular, which is, in turn, reshaping Internet-based company business models and revenue sources. In a digital world, more product can be made available with far less overhead because it doesn't take up physical space. What the Long Tail says is that this allows a broader range of purchasing options to the consumer, which then results in increased revenue even if a given song, for example, is only purchased by a mere few people.

"The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More" by Chris Anderson claims that thar's gold in them thar hills. He tells us it is not a few big chunks we want, but many small nuggets.

Modern examples are Amazon.com and NetFlix, both of which sell plenty of Harry Potter products and the like. They also (or rent, as is with NetFlix) lots of less popular products. They hit the niche market hard. That's the gold.

The long tail is the curve's far end. At the top of the curve is Harry Potter, for example, along with other New York Times Bestsellers. These products certainly represent a significant amount of sales. However, so do the accumulated number of books and movies which might sell only a few copies a year. Add those up, and there is serious profit. While the tail in the curve is not high, it is long. One copy of, say. The Love, a Hungarian film, and one copy of The Very Best of Ralph Stanley, a bluegrass CD, might not sound like much, but the tail is long. Those, with thousands of other products sold each month, would make their seller very happy.

My own business is built on a long tail method. The market for Hungarian products is not like the Billboard Top 40. It is like the Billboard Bottom 20,000, if there were such a thing. It works.

Anderson's principles can be applied by small businesses like mine, and massive Fortune 500s looking to reach where few are reaching. The markets are there, and, by considering Anderson's ideas, so is the process.

I fully recommend "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More" by Chris Anderson.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

The Long Tail is an interesting theory, covering a new aspect of demand that is not shaped by the scarcity of a physical economy. According to the author the tail shape of the demand curve, in almost any industry, carries value as goods and services are not determined only by best sellers or hits. Flow from production to the end consumer is then unlimited and niches become revelant markets in a digital economy. However, the book devotes much of its chapters and examples to the entertainment industry. But fails to capitalize on how such theory would be applied to the economies of scale of actual manufacturers of physical goods. Economic theory of production also takes into account the scarcity of the resources -human and material- required to create physical products. It is however a best scenario presented about how the digital economy is shaping demand and people and companies taking advantage of it.

Mr. Anderson's book is based on his article from wired magazine. The article says it all. You don't need to read the book. In fact the book didn't really need to be published. There is not enough material for a book. The concept is simple and you get the picture in the first chapter. The rest of the book is just filler so that it has more weight than a pamphlet and you will but it. There are some supporting facts, but mostly they are case examples that are too lengthy and off the main point.

The marketing concept is that when (as now) the cost of connecting consumers to vendors reaches zero vendors can offer limitless variety and there will (and is) demand for everything, mainstream and the unusual. We already know this from experience in today's world but might not have realized it. Anderson sums it up nicely in a matchbook cover. I'm glad that statistics have shown American's are not as culturally mainstream as I once thought. Its the medium of the marketplace that has been to blame and not our limited imaginations. Lets hope our "culture" is able to grow from our new ability to experience more than the mainstream.

Anyone who deals with e-commerce should read this. Although this book's knowledge is common sense for most people nowadays, it still holds great value for getting it in your head over and over again: every minute a customer is born in a different market (sorry Joe Vitale, had to edit your statement).

Working with websites, e-commerce and e-marketing every day much of my success depends on the long tail. One part this book does not cover, however, is the perseverance you need to actually go out create it. Endless hours are spent on items that seem irrellevant and hopes are high as results stay low... and then, one day it starts rolling.

"Well, it's about time", you say. "I can do that as well, it's easy" anyone else will say. But only you know that creating this longtail is what sets you apart from the rest, not the knowledge about it.

The future commerce revealed, this book explains "in English" the effect new media (and by my generation) has had on today's and tomorrow's economy...

This book was given to me after I expressed how much I liked Gladwell's Tipping Point. The Long Tail was, for me, the less edgy cousin to TP and I liked it very much. Gets into a new world of business economics and cites specific applications. I particularly liked the sections dedicated to the music industry.

One odd note: I'd never heard anyone talk about the Rhapsody music service in all my life and I felt a little like this was a commercial for them.

Overall a good read and worth the time spent.

Your special interests, goals, activities and hobbies can make you money. This book will show that money can be made with the most mundane topics and interests. The basic message: we are no longer in an economy where what is most popular wins. To get the most from this book, I had to do a general overview and then go back and tie the book premises together. I think the author missed the opportunity to turn this book into a straightforward manual on what to do. I think the book spent a lot of time on research related material to convince the reader that the premise is promising. With all that there is on the internet about the subject, I would encourage you to read and you tube presentations on the subject, and then buy the book and dissect it looking for the key tools on "how" to implement your own marketing strategy for your personalized interest, hobby, book or service. The book has some practical things you can do, but it's buried into the mid to later chapters.

The ideas in this book are so true. You can make more money at serving multiple niche audiences than one large audience. The book rings true especially for online entities. Great ideas and you get the gist quickly when you first start reading the book.

The Essay in wired is good enough. The book is interesting however, just not needed reading if you can find the original essay.

The bad news is that this book is really a long magazine article, which possibly reflects Chris Anderson's daytime job, editing "Wired". The Long Tail feels padded and lacks the substance of a real book. Too many of the examples are repeated.

The good news is that the one or two insights of the book really are insightful.

We've all heard the 80-20 rule of thumb that 80% of the wealth is health by 20% of the people. (The two numbers don't have to add up to 100 BTW, but we'll pass on that.) The distribution of wealth scales. In a total economy worth one billion dollars for one hundred thousand people, that means that the richest 20,000 people have 800 million dollars. But the rule can be applied to a situation as many times as we wish. 20% of 20,000 is 4,000 people who would have 80% of 800 million, or 640 million. We apply it again and find that 800 people have 512 million.

When you plot this on a graph, you'll find yourself drawing a curve that is very thick at the left (the rich few at the head) and peters out to a long thin tail (the many poor). This is called a power law distribution and many processes in nature and in economics follow it, in particular for consumer markets. Wal Mart & Sears are in the left's fat head, while the fusion jazz record store is in the curve's tail on the right.

Anderson's insight is that the internet has thickened the long tail for markets. Fifty years ago if you wanted to listen to Ethiopean jazz, you had one option: fly to Ethiopia. Thirty years ago you had the second option of going to import jazz record shops in large cities. Today, you can live in Medecine Hat, Alberta and instantly order Ethiopique No. 4 from Amazon. The demand was always there: in a population of millions there's always one or two eccentrics who want something unusual. More than that, in a population of millions on top of the ordinary necessities found in the fat head, everyone wants something special that belongs in the long tail. The long tail is thickening and the 21st century's gold mine is probably in it.

Vincent Poirier, Dublin

Wired magazine packs some of the best technology writers and new economy experts in the world, and with this book Chris Andersen asserts his position as the leader of the pack. This book has the right mix of the essential ingredients of a good business book: enough rigor for business theory but not so much as to make it dry; enough anecdotes to bring the point home but not so much as to make it repetitive; enough opinions and wit to make the reader question but not so much as to make it biased and shallow.

Like all mainstream business books, this one does not resist the temptation to encapsulate all business and socio-cultural phenomena around one simple theory. However, Anderson maintains the humility to admit discovery than claim invention. Expect this concept to become as widespread and oft-quoted (if not more) in understanding the digital consumer economy, than Geoffrey Moore's Chasm was/is in understanding the evolution of hi-tech products.

I've constantly searched for a book that accurately describes the changes in media created by my generation. By the time I broke the first few pages of The Long Tail, I knew I found what I was looking for. I currently work in one of the largest industries influencing the spread of long tail industries: mobile.

Many old media companies are struggling to adapt to the changing interests of the younger generation, more specifically, their buying habits. While the wave of "new media" started in the mid-90's, its affects have not met their peak, and many industries, although on the decline, still have the opportunity to learn from Anderson's research.

Anderson provides tremendous insight into the impact iTunes and Napster had on Radio, and more specifically, ClearChannel. Never before have I read such a solid perspective as Anderson provides; it almost becomes a blueprint for ClearChannel's demise.

This is a must read for those stuck in the old media world, or even those well into the new media world. It will change the way you look at your business.

You know, we're just getting started with this whole Internet thing, right?

As an information marketer, I must admit this book really captured my imagination. The long tail concept holds that the digital age (bits) is allowing and encouraging expanded marketing channels that are far superior to traditional brick-and-mortar arrangements (atoms).

Consider Netflix, which can offer limitless movies while your local video store might only offer what they can stock. The key to selling less of more is to make better use of inventory. Netflix and other companies accomplish this by automating a recommendation process with software. I've recently read that 90% of Netflix's inventory turns over every 30 days.

Amazon uses similar recommendation software. In fact, they allow me to recommend my 5 Cool Ideas For Better Working, Living & Feeling (Michael Angelo Caruso) book in this review.

I enjoyed this book very much.It really enlightened me to the math behind the explosive growth of the net.Being from a Brick and Mortar retail back ground,I now have a better understanding through the Long Tail.I have also found my new favorite artist through the Long Tial theory.I never knew Bob Marley had a brother and through a online recommendation I found Richard Marley's "Medicine Man" on Amazon.Every track is Amazing!

While most good business books will offer you a gem or two that, if cultivated, could help you to become more efficient, effective or affluent; it is rare indeed to find a book that opens the doors (and the readers mind) to a whole new way to look at business and commerce in the future. If you are or will be involved in the marketing of a prouct in the next twenty years this book is a must read. There is no doubt in my mind that many will take the information in this book and leverage it into millions of dollars. It wouldn't surprise me at all if someone smarter than I takes this information and becomes a billionaire.

This book could have been written in 10 pages. It repeats the same concepts over and over again.

This book is relevant to business today and is insightful in its numerous examples and explanations. Although the reader understands the author's thesis of "The Long Tail" within the first chapter of the book, the following 200 pages are not unnecessary recountings of that same thesis. Instead, Anderson follows the implications and consequences of The Long Tail in sales, marketing, trends in consumer behavior and how companies must understand why selling less of more will be the key to survival in the upcoming decades to come.

The book's downfall, however, may be that it focuses solely on a few key companies that have helped to usher in the digital age of unlimited varities and choices where the consumer is king and countless niches are the new mainstream blockbusters. The book is enjoyable and entertaining and resonated with me as a frequent visitor to Amazon, a user of iTunes and avid blogger. Young or old, anyone in business today should have an understanding of how The Long Tail and the companies that benefit from it has and will continue to change our lives.

This book is a great piece of art, easy to read and great to analyze.

Most of my career in software marketing, sales and management was directed at generating 80% of our revenues from 20% of our customers. Now I'm on the board of a company that is very effectively doing the opposite: generating 100% of our revenues from the 80% of the customer base that was previously ignored.

The Long Tail does a wonderful job of introducing this possibility of turning your business upside down, explaining why it is now possible, and provides thought-provoking examples along the way. Do these ideas apply to selling enterprise software? Perhaps - if you are a user of Salesforce.com, then the answer is clearly "yes".

Chris Anderson, the author, does tend to see the world through a long-tail-lens, but nevertheless draws from a broad enough range of examples to keep the reader engaged and interested.

For those who have also read "The Anatomy of Buzz", "The Tipping Point", and/or related books, The Long Tail should suggest a way to bring this range of ideas together: how do you harness word-of-mouth and viral techniques to serve customers in the "tail" for your offerings?

This is a very good book to read on your next flight!

My son's teacher suggested I purchase this book for him as my son, Mason, loves to read. Well, to be honest, I think that it is way above his level.

First, it was my understanding that The Adventures of Long Tail was about a family of cats named Long Tail, Boots, and Biscuit. I don't know if Mr. Anderson ever gets around to even mentioning these cats because after chapter 3, Mason and his sister Emma gave up on reading this.

What's worse is just this past weekend, I asked my kids if they wanted to go see Bee Movie with their cousins, Skyler and Hannah, and Mason clucked his tongue and said that I was just another product of common culture. After painting his back porch red for the sassmouth, I asked him where he learned this garbage and he said the tail book.

Parents, please be aware, no matter what your child's teacher might say, this is not an appropriate book for elementary school children.

I'm just over halfway through this book right now and I'm sad to say that I've realized I'm not a filter. I'm not the kind of guy this book talks about who helps others pick through the detritus in a specific niche and guides them to valued purchases. So I'm trying to change that starting with this review. The book is an enjoyable read with accessible examples everyone can relate to - not the typical stuffy business book. As a web developer it is really inspiring to learn about the economics driving the phenomenon of unlimited inventory and social recommendations. If you are an ideas person I would advise you not to read this book before bedtime because you'll find yourself struggling to sleep after reading each chapter

If you are interested in how the iTunes business model is redefining business, read this book. Of course, it goes far beyond that. But, if you earned your MBA in the Twentieth Century, you need to read this tomorrow.

Extending the revenue life of mainstream products by incrementally adding features is not a new concept. However, Chris Anderson offers a new insight to this marketing strategy and shows how the internet is changing the game. This book is a good read for anyone interested in leveraging the power of the internet for competitive advantage.

The essence of the long tail is brought up by others in a better form (e.g. See IBM consulting and Nordström& Bergenstråle in Karaoke Capitalism)and I find that the focus on the music industry could have been diluted with examples from many other branches of business in the FMCG area

I wish I'd read this a year earlier.

Wow. It's scary and leveling. This book explains why you should reset your expectations about what any product can achieve an a world of abundant choice.

On the one hand the "Long tail" is about exploiting the market for low volume items, but knew a lot about that already.

What I'd not fully taken into account was the how the long tail dramatically reduces the potential for a hit product in our information overloaded world.

Great book, very well argued. Lots of great data.

Must reads to go with this book are;

The Paradox of Choice
A Whole New Mind

Este es un libro estructural. Ayuda a comprender la forma en que trabaja la economia a la luz de los avances de internet.

Pero tambien es un placer leerlo, lenguaje claro, ejemplos relevantes. Un lujo.

This book started off as an article in Wired Magazine, and it was an excellent one. But Anderson must have decided to cash in, because the book doesn't add anything that wasn't covered in the article itself. It's not a complex concept.

Read the article on the Wired website. Then go spend your money on something from a tiny niche market.

This is one of those books that has one, keen insight and then takes one hundred + pages to say the same thing over and again. The keen point is indeed interesting. It just does not a complete book make. My $.02 !!

This is an insightful book into the today's world of retail business. Cool examples of how the Internet has leveled the playing field for many small businesses and artist.

I am not much of a business mind but I think I get the picture here. Instead of twenty percent of the product bringing in eighty percent of the revenue ninety- eight percent of the product is going to bring in all the revenue. Having so much available, and having ready access to it means sales no longer concentrate on a relatively few items. Freedom of choice abounds, niches multiply, Alvin Toffler is happy, future shock is no longer shocking, customization is here forever, and we all can have anything we want as long as we are able to pay for it.
Good. But I think of this in another way. Does this mean that 'value' also will not be centered as we ordinarily center it in the great works, the masterpeices, the few chosen ones? Does it mean our whole conception of valuing cultural goods will change, and a few big things will be less worshipped while many more appreciated? In other words will deTocqueville be happy here because 'equality' is in the saddle and mankind has many little good things, instead of the aristocracy only having a few?
And what does that mean for creators of culture? As a writer can I now happily post my unpublished writings with the thought that perhaps a few will read them, where before none did. In other words a moneyless long- tail is still a long- tail.
I don't know. But I do sense Anderson has hit on to a new truth here which will have all kinds of implications better business people than me will have to see.

The Long Tail is a must read for anyone wondering how the Internet works or how it's changing the world as we know it. In the book, Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired Magazine, explains how one simple principle is behind so many of the social and economic changes we are seeing with the internet. The Internet makes it possible for many people to produce and publish cheaply and for many other people to find those "amateur" works easily. For example, until the Internet, the only music you had access to was the top 40 on the radio or maybe the top 500 albums at the music store and maybe a local band at the bar on weekends. Now you have access to hundreds of thousands of songs written and produced by anybody and everybody in the world. Not only that but they are easily searchable in many different ways. So a you don't have to listen to just hits anymore and you don't have to be a world wide hit to be successful. That's what is changing the world. Niche markets are growing (around all of these non-hit works) and at the same time the way we share and find these niche products is becoming easier and easier - creating new communities online.

Chris Anderson explains it much better than me and I highly recommend the book if you've noticed that the Internet is changing the world and wondered why.

If you've heard about the long tail, you've heard it.

You don't need to go out and buy this book, unless you feel like studying the whole phenemenon (which your teacher might think you should).

To me, it feels like this book was needed to scientifically prove the concept of the Long Tail. That's good, but not something for me. I believe it already.

"Find some articles on the long tail" would be my personal take on it.

This book gives a good history of how markets were established and changed over the course of time. Internet based businesses are changing our society from less of a hit culture to a niche culture. This book goes into how different markets can utilize the web to sell alot of one at a time sales rather than alot of one item. Products that work best are software/bit type of products rather than products that have actual mass.
A must read for anyone in the marketing or internet industry, or just business in general.

While the concept of a long tail seems incredibly obvious on the surface, try to apply it - like we did on SEM. We spent considerable labor developing and tracking our long tail only to find that we didn't have enough crumbs to make a cake. This concept may be more applicable to merchandising - where cost of inventory is not an issue.

When it rains, it pours. After a long dry spell, we have a downpour of excellent business books - Long Tail, Blue Ocean Strategy, Made to Stick, Eightstorm. Seems an interesting age to live.

I really enjoyed the exploration of the internet and why it impacts personal tastes and the wider exploration of the diminished "mainstream" influence.

this is an awesome book. very clear.........and on the ..... money!!

however, it is over a few chapters in. we get it. the name says it all ..... way too well. secondly, it's a bit backwards to publish a book in paper about going forwards!!!

Different types of books serve different purposes, some books tell great stories that motivate and inspire us, other books give practical "how to" advice, others enable us to escape to a world miles away from reality, while others help us make sense of a world that we otherwise wouldn't understand. I love books that fall into the last category. Some of the recent "classics" in this category include The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell), The Wisdom of Crowds (James Surowiecki) and The World is Flat (Tomas Friedman).

The Long Tail is a brilliant book written with similar wisdom and research as these "classics". In the Long Tail, Chris Andersen (Editor in chief of Wired magazine and author of the Long Tail) explains how the internet is creating distinct shifts in economics and culture. The internet provides consumers with more choice and better search capabilities across different products enabling them to make buying decisions that link closely to their specific interests and needs. This ultimately means that for certain niche products there is an increase in both supply and demand. The internet creates more consumer choice, therefore the demand curve for goods is flattening meaning there is less demand the traditionally popular items (e.g. Brittany Spears and Wilber Smith) and more demand for traditionally less popular items (e.g. Nikolaus Von Knorring, a Swedish soft rock artist and Saltwater Fly Tying, a book by Frank Wentink) creating a long tail on the demand curve. The author uses a number of different and interesting examples to illustrate this phenomenon. In the case of books, a traditional bookstore (e.g. Exclusive Books in South Africa) will typically stock up to 150000 titles in its largest store. This means that consumers must find what they want in amongst those 150000 titles if they are to buy a book. At the same time it is pretty difficult to search books in a bookstore because you physically need to browse through titles on the shelf. The result of this is that certain "blockbuster" books are pushed and less popular books with a niche focus are ignored. The internet changes this equation completely. Firstly, [...] offers the consumer access to 4.5 million book titles and enables them to search for very specific themes and topics in amongst those 4.5 million titles. This means that titles that were previously ignored are being purchased by individuals with very specific interests. In my own case I recently found a book on [...] entitled "Researching Entrepreneurship" written by a Professor from Brisbane. 15 years ago I would probably never have even known that this title existed whereas now I was able to purchase it and search other titles purchased by people with the same interest. This concept is exaggerated in the world of music because digital music is not only stored and marketed on the internet, but online music it is highly searchable and is downloadable meaning that you don't even need to rely on a courier service to deliver the end product.

As we look to the future the Long Tail concept has important implications for:
Movies and DVD's with a shift from the traditional DVD store and cinema to Netflix and online movie downloads;
Newspapers and magazines with a shift away from paper toward online publishing and blogs;
Travel with a shift away from travel agents towards self service via the internet.
The Long Tail phenomenon is happening and is becoming more and more important as bandwidth increases and more and more products and marketed and sold via the internet.

We'll all look back in a few years and remember The Long Tail as one of the defining economics books of the 21st century.

This is a great book! The subtitle is: why the future of business is selling less of more - the niche markets, and refers to the long tail found in a stats graph, where you have the bell portion pushed to the left (representing the majority or more popular items) and then a long tail that goes on exponentially - never getting to zero. We, as consumers, have more choices and by having more choices what we choose will have more outcomes. For example, he talks about when he (and myself) were growing up in the 70's only had 3 or 4 TV stations to choose from, so we all watched the same thing. Now, we have 100 TV stations, movies on TV and DVD and the internet to take our time in the evening - so instead of 3 or 4 stations vying for our attention to get the largest share of the viewers (say 30%), there are hundreds of ways to spend our time so the viewership will never probably be that high again. So looking at a graph, there are the few shows that get a good share of the viewership, but if one was to poll everyone to see what they watched, the choices would be almost unlimited - the long tail. What he is getting at is the niche markets - markets that are so small that they never existed before mostly because they were cost prohibited. Now however, because of the internet (no brick/morter buildings to support and depending on the product, no product to house) people can offer more choices and at a reduced cost. One example of this is iTunes. Apple has no CDs to store - just tunes (or audiobooks) on servers, so they can store tunes that are popular just as easily as tunes that are less popular. What is amazing is that every one of their 1 million tunes has been purchased at least once. Traditional stores could not justify shelf space for an item that just sold once or twice a year, but a virtual store can. And the non-traditional stores find that having more alternatives creates a market of alternatives, doesn't matter what the atlernative is - music, videos, books - there is a market for it all, albeit a small market, but alot of small markets add up to a large market. He talks of companies that created markets - Sears and Robuck, amazon, Apple, Netflix, Rhapsody. He also talks about people who created their own market because of their ability to be producers - creating something, putting it on the Internet, and gaining a following - some later go on to create things for money, as in bands who first post music they created, mixed and posted all from their home computer and then sells singles or I was thinking of the person who has a blog and goes on to create a blook, self-published by Lulu, sold on Amazon, wins a Blooker award and is hyped on NPR - which creates more demand. This happened with Colby Buzzell's My War:Killing Time in Iraq. As the cost of doing business, creating a market goes down, and becomes more available to more people, creating more choices, more niche markets are created. The more niche markets, the traditional markets find themselves less powerful. Some adapt others don't. And we know that someone/something doesn't adapt to new surroundings they cannot survive and I believe that is what we are seeing in TV today - especially the big 3 scrambling for the viewership numbers that no longer exists. We all see the adds for Netflix and iTunes, but until I read this book, I never realized how great their influence was!