• The Long Tail

  • Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
  • By: Chris Anderson
  • Narrated by: Christopher Nissley
  • Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (1,119 ratings)

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The Long Tail  By  cover art

The Long Tail

By: Chris Anderson
Narrated by: Christopher Nissley
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Publisher's summary

Our world is being transformed by the Internet and the near limitless choice that it provides to consumers; tomorrow's markets belong to those who can take advantage of this. The Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance, an entirely new model for business that is just starting to show its power as unlimited selection reveals new truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it. The record business has been transformed by iTunes and Rhapsody; a similar transformation is coming to just about every industry imaginable.

What happens when everything in the world becomes available to everyone? When the combined value of all the millions of items that may sell only a few copies equals or exceeds the value of the few items that sell millions each? When a bunch of kids with no profit motive can record a song or make a video and get the same electronic distribution for it as the most powerful corporation?

Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine, first explored "The Long Tail" in an article that has become one of the most influential business essays of our time. Using the worlds of movies, books, and music, he showed how the Internet has made possible a new world in which the combined value of modest sellers and quirky titles equals the sales of the top hits. He coined the term "The Long Tail" to describe this phenomenon, a phrase that's since appeared in boardrooms and media around the world.

"In short, though we still obsess over hits," Anderson writes, "they are not quite the economic force they once were. Where are those fickle consumers going instead? No single place. They are scattered to the winds as markets fragment into a thousand niches."

©2006 Chris Anderson. All rights reserved (P)2006 Hyperion. All rights reserved.

Critic reviews

  • Winner of Audio Publishers Association 2007 Audie Award, Business Information/Education

"Anderson manages to explain a murky trend in clear language, giving entrepreneurs and the rest of us plenty to think about." (Publishers Weekly)
"Christopher Nissley's reading style fits the content; he's clipped and staccato, like Anderson's writing. His narration is helpful to the listener who prefers not to get bogged down in the theoretical and technical parts of the book." (AudioFile)

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What listeners say about The Long Tail

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Good Book, Flawed by Repition

I thought this was a good book that should have been about half the length that it actually was. It's too bad no abridged version is available. I agreed with the author's ideas, but about 3 hours in, I really felt that he was repeating himself unnecessarily.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

My Pick for Book of the Year

This is the best book I’ve read in about a year.

It explains so much of the internet phenomena. It references all the best contemporary work on this subject but pulls it all together in a unified framework.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

In depth solid material

The Long Tail is a well-presented, well-researched book describing the democratization of the means of producing and distributing goods and information. The long tail is what Chris Anderson calls the effect of aggregating vast numbers of like items and graphing them as hits and niches in such a way that the chart looks like a 'reverse hockey stick' with the handle being the tail.

In a digital age the cost and ease of producing niche products and media has both redeemed and made irrelevant Karl Marx? critique of capitalist society. We all can virtually own the means of production and we can independently have access to markets without capital, or very much of it.

In an age of search engines we have the ability to filter an unbelievable range of options so that markets can be made from the thinnest quantity of items and to the smallest niche number of consumers. The Long Tail, once irrelevant and inaccessible, now is driving the digital ecomony.

As a listen, the unabridged version can be a little more detail than you might need, but stick with it and the detail will payoff.

Unlike some books of this type, the audible version does not suffer because you cannot visually scan backward to review when the argument becomes too complex. The reader, Christopher Nissley does a great job.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Change I believe in

As a small business owner, this book has changed the way I think about our product and services.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Zzz

I've never finished this one. It's oh so boring, even though the subject interests me. I simply find it too slow going, repetitive, and lacking something I did not know beforehand.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Food for thought

Being in the book industry, we found this thesis thought provoking. It was a challenging but much needed wake up call. Well illustrated with current business innovations and trends, it helped me to appreciate how quickly the world is changing and gave us some ideas on positioning ourselves for the future.

There is quite a following to this book and several websites are devoted to its discussion. Recommended for any business owner, across all industries! A worthy herald of sea-change.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A Long (but worthy) Tale, About a Long Tail.

Provides a new component to business analysis; in that the tradition factors of marketing no longer provide a full market view. Sale of limited or unique market products can now be readily presented and supplied alongside dominant market products. Each having equal opportunity to reach and be purchased by other distributors and end market purchasers. The study further demonstrates “tail” products in mass can equal and surpass the dominant market products when conglomerated. Think Amazon.

A little dated, a little too redundant and a little too long but an essential understanding to anyone who seeks to market in today's arena; and especially marketing via the web. Don’t let my ratings discourage those who need to consider how to sell a product in today's electronic world. It is not necessarily a fun read, but it is an educational read.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

the long tail

This book was an absolute waste. What was said in the book could have been said in 3 paragraphs. Basically, it is about niche marketing. So how do you stretch a narrow topic like that over 8 hours?? I am not sticking around to find out..

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Wow! A must listen!

I found this book to be interesting and dynamic. I could not turn it off. I have listened to it twice to make sure I did not miss anything.
Buy this book if you want to learn about the past, present and future of business.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Very good, but needs an update

A very interesting audiobook with just one flaw - because it largely draws upon technology and related businesses for its subject matter, it is already slightly dated. This is one of those books that would benefit from an update, not because anything in it is necessarily wrong, but because things in this sphere just move so quickly. For example, MySpace, which is mentioned excitedly in the book, is now a dying website...

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1 person found this helpful