The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: new tastemakers, unlimited shelf space, niche culture, New York Times, United States, Google Video (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wired editor Anderson declares the death of "common culture"—and insists that it's for the best. Why don't we all watch the same TV shows, like we used to? Because not long ago, "we had fewer alternatives to compete for our screen attention," he writes. Smash hits have existed largely because of scarcity: with a finite number of bookstore shelves and theaters and Wal-Mart CD racks, "it's only sensible to fill them with the titles that will sell best." Today, Web sites and online retailers offer seemingly infinite inventory, and the result is the "shattering of the mainstream into a zillion different cultural shards." These "countless niches" are market opportunities for those who cast a wide net and de-emphasize the search for blockbusters. It's a provocative analysis and almost certainly on target—though Anderson's assurances that these principles are equally applicable outside the media and entertainment industries are not entirely convincing. The book overuses its examples from Google, Rhapsody, iTunes, Amazon, Netflix and eBay, and it doesn't help that most of the charts of "Long Tail" curves look the same. But Anderson manages to explain a murky trend in clear language, giving entrepreneurs and the rest of us plenty to think about. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

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 his KitchenAid and Lego examples fell flat. A few pointed out that online markets constitute just 10 percent of U.S. retail, and brick-and-mortar stores will never disappear. Anderson's thesis came under a separate attack by Lee Gomes in his Wall Street Journal column. Anderson had defined the "98 Percent Rule" in his book to mean that no matter how much inventory is made available online, 98 percent of the items will sell at least once. Yet Gomes cited statistics that could indicate that, as the Web and Web services become more mainstream, the 98 Percent Rule may no longer apply: "Ecast [a music-streaming company] told me that now, with a much bigger inventory than when Mr. Anderson spoke to them two years ago, the quarterly no-play rate has risen from 2% to 12%. March data for the 1.1 million songs of Rhapsody, another streamer, shows a 22% no-play rate; another 19% got just one or two plays." If Anderson overreaches in his thesis, he has nonetheless written "one of those business books that, ironically, deserves more than a niche readership" (Houston Chronicle).

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (July 11, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401302378
• ISBN-13: 978-1401302375
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (194 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #111,675 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

148 of 159 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Theory... But Then What?, August 3, 2006

By	Michele Miller - See all my reviews

Well, timing is everything... and isn't always fair. Had I not just completed reading Jeffrey & Bryan Eisenberg's "Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?" before picking up "The Long Tail," I would probably have given this book 4 stars.

Chris Anderson has done a very good job of showing us the new "economics of abundance," or the connection of supply and demand thru technology and the Internet.

Question: What happens when everything in the world becomes available to everyone?

Answer: A market that never dies... markets for every niche, and vice-versa.

The Long Tail.

Using corporate examples like Google, eBay, iTunes and Netflix, Anderson lends an interesting perspective on how these companies have grabbed the Long Tail theory (consciously or unconsciously) and used it as the foundation for their staggering success. For customers of these companies, being online means unlimited "shelf space" - access to hundreds of thousands of bits of information, products and services they'd never been exposed to otherwise.

But how does the ordinary businessperson experience the success of the eBays of the world? Here, Anderson falls short. He states his "secret" to The Long Tail:

1. Make everything available
2. Help me find it

It's the "help me find it" part that Anderson ignores. In fact, it's the end of the book... you're left hanging, thinking, "So how in hell am I supposed to help people find me?"

Taken for what it is - a good presentation of a present-day theory (and one that was adequately covered in the original article in Wired magazine), the book is fine. But to really understand what it takes to make the Long Tail theory work for you, you must get a copy of "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark." It's in-depth coverage on not only how our economy works today, but understanding how people buy, how to understand what they're looking for and what you need to do to create persuasion magic not only on your website but in all your marketing materials.

This is not a time for "build it and they will come." Understanding an economy is only the first step. The real question is - what are you going to do about it to make yourself an integral part of the Long Tail?

It's too bad "The Long Tail" and "Waiting For Your Cat to Bark" can't be sold in a box set - they were made for each other.

211 of 236 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ties an old familiar statistical graph to current consumer trends, July 23, 2006

By	calvinnme "Texan refugee" (Fredericksburg, Va) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

The long tail is the colloquial name for a long-known feature of statistical distributions that is also known as "heavy tails", "power-law tails" or "Pareto tails". In these distributions a high-frequency or high-amplitude population is followed by a low-frequency or low-amplitude population which gradually "tails off". In many cases the infrequent or low-amplitude events--the long tail--can cumulatively outnumber or outweigh the initial portion of the graph, such that in aggregate they comprise the majority. In this book the author explains how due to changing technology it is now not only feasible but desirable in business to cater to the "long tail" of this curve.

The author explains how in traditional retail, you have the 80/20 rule, with 20 percent of the products accounting for 80 percent of the revenue. Online, instead, he sees the "98 percent rule." Where 98 percent of all the possible choices get chosen by someone, and where the 90 percent that is only available online accounts for half the revenue and two-thirds of the profits. He also explains how filters and recommender systems that help people find what they are really looking for are crucial ingredients. Thus, in a nutshell, Anderson's theory is that mass culture is fading, and being replaced by a series of niches. Thus the subtitle of his book, "Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More."

The author explains that the three forces of the long tail are:
1. Democratization of the tools of production such as GarageBand for musicians.
2. Minimization of the costs of distribution which in turn minimize the cost of consumption such as wideband internet connections.
3. The connection of consumers to one another to minimize the noise down the tail, such as this Amazon review system.

In this brave new world of niche markets, the author explains the new producers, markets, and tastemakers all of which are largely driven by the technological forces of cheap hardware and increasingly sophisticated recommender systems that tap the on-line purchasing habits of consumers and match individuals with the products that are likely to interest them the most. Anderson goes on to explain the power of Long Tail economics by citing sales and trend data in three media: books (Amazon), music (Rhapsody) and movies (NetFlix). He postulates the seemingly incredible claim that Walmart is in fact elitist, since they are constrained by physical space to offering only the most popular products. This is another basic premise of the book - that until the birth of the Internet physical space constrained retailers to offering only the most popular 20% of items because they represented 80% of the purchasing power.

The author's arguments hold up the best when he examines the entertainment industry. It is obvious that the recording industry is at a loss as to what to do about the fact that their sales are fading fast other than to blame piracy and sue consumers that dare decide that an overpriced vanilla-sounding boy-band CD is not worth the price. You can also see the desperation in the movie industry too, that has resorted to begging people to go to the theaters at the Academy Awards, but continues to mainly output recycled and formulaic products and reaps the expected mundane ticket receipts.

However, I think that the author overlooks two points. First, people crave some kind of common conversation with their fellow man. If we are all broken up into groups of a dozen each that all have the same politics, like the same music, and watch the same movies, then the community at large is duller for it. Take "American Idol" for example. It is obvious that this is not a hit show because America thinks that the winner is going to be the next Elvis Presley. In fact, the winners usually represent the plain vanilla output that has brought the recording industry to its knees in the first place. Can you see someone as gritty as Joe Cocker ever winning this contest? It is the audience participation and the feeling that you are part of the outcome that is the appeal. Also, people flocked to the very successful Harry Potter movies and the Lord of the Rings trilogy just as much because everyone else was going and taking their kids to see them and thus they were part of society's "common conversation" as they were because of the quality of the films. The second point that the author overlooks is that the monopolies whose death he cheers due to the "long tail" are simply being replaced by other monopolies. Who else but large businesses with the resources to mine the hugely diverse "long tail" shall prosper in the long term? A case in point is that the author himself keeps coming back to the same companies when he talks about "long tail" success stories.

In summary, although this book is a bit repetitive at times, it makes some good points. The author does a good job of tying the old familiar "long tail" statistical graph to the rapid change in purchasing habits over the last ten years, which is something that nobody else had succeeded in doing until he articulated the trend.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Terrific book on sea change for business modeling, August 30, 2006

By	Shawn S. Sullivan (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Chris Anderson has written a thought-provoking book in The Long Tail. It's about the new economics of culture and commerce. While I enjoyed thinking about the main premise - that the Internet has dramatically changed the interplay between supply and demand - I once again concluded that the book could have been a lot shorter (possibly a result of my taking the book "Blink" to heart).

The title refers to the shape of a classic downward-sloping demand curve if you graphed popularity (x-axis) vs. demand (y-axis). Think about book industry where the demand for a few titles (bestsellers or even top 100) is very high, but demand for the 200,000th most popular book is sporadic at best. Consequently, Barnes & Noble stores can only carry books with a certain level of demand and will miss a lot of the niche topics that are out there.

But, because of the Internet, the demand captured in the 'long tail' of this curve, comprised of thousands of niche businesses, represents a vibrant business. For example, while the typical Barnes & Noble will carry 100,000 titles, Amazon offers 3.7 million and says that 25% of their sales come from books outside of the top 100,000 titles. They claim, and the premise of the book is, that as companies offer increased supply (because in the new Internet economy, they can), demand seems to follow supply and, in fact, increases.

Another related trend is the transition across business lines from 'hit' to 'niche', which is exemplified by the popularity of myspace.com, ebay, itunes and google (representing the long tail of advertising).

The six main themes of the book are:

1. In virtually all markets, there are far more niche goods than hits, as a result of improvements in the basic tools of production (i.e. Internet).
2. The costs of reaching these niches is now falling dramatically thanks to digital distribution, search and a critical mass of broadband technology.
3. There are a range of tools - from recommendations to rankings (think search) that help to shift demand down the long tail, and help people find useful/relevant niches.
4. The effect of all of this is that the demand curve will eventually flatten, with the hits becoming relatively less popular and the niches growing in popularity.
5. All of the niches add up to comprise a market that rivals the hits.
6. The internet can reveal a natural shape of demand, undistorted by distribution bottlenecks, scarcity of information and limited choice of shelf space.

I would recommend this book to all those interested in a well thought out premise on how the internet has radically altered many business models due to various supply and demand characteristics and the ability to exploit demand that would previously not have been profitable.