The Long Tail

Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

By: Chris Anderson

Narrated by: Christopher Nissley

What happens when the bottlenecks that stand between supply and demand in our culture go away and everything becomes available to everyone?

"The Long Tail" is a powerful new force in our economy: the rise of the niche. As the cost of reaching consumers drops dramatically, our markets are shifting from a one-size-fits-all model of mass appeal to one of unlimited variety for unique tastes. From supermarket shelves to advertising agencies, the ability to offer vast choice is changing everything, and causing us to rethink where our markets lie and how to get to them. Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it, from DVDs at Netflix to songs on iTunes to advertising on Google.

However, this is not just a virtue of online marketplaces; it is an example of an entirely new economic model for business, one that is just beginning to show its power. After a century of obsessing over the few products at the head of the demand curve, the new economics of distribution allow us to turn our focus to the many more products in the tail, which collectively can create a new market as big as the one we already know.

The Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance. New efficiencies in distribution, manufacturing, and marketing are essentially resetting the definition of what's commercially viable across the board. If the 20th century was about hits, the 21st will be equally about niches.©2006 Chris Anderson. All rights reserved; (P)2006 Hyperion. All rights reserved.

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.

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.

Less is More with the Long Tail

Would you consider the audio edition of The Long Tail to be better than the print version?

The audio version is convenient to listen to.

What other book might you compare The Long Tail to and why?

Free by Chris Anderson

What about Christopher Nissley’s performance did you like?

Clear, concise, and easy to listen to.

Really Interesting

This is a really interesting subject and he talks about it with a good use of facts and examples. It really got me thinking.

All business people need these concepts

As a consumer, I've been delighted with the recent explosion of choices. As a retailer, I've been struggling to take advantage of new technologies to satisfy an expanded internet market.

This book puts the changing business climate into a historical and conceptual perspective that makes sense. They never taught us this in college in the 80's, but today they'd better teach it to business students, because success and survival in today's marketplace requires an understanding of the process described in this book.

Some people understand some of these mechanisms intuitively or hazily, based on their own observations and that may be enough, but seeing the whole concept outlined so clearly, with so many examples is enlightening and inspiring.