3.85

3

Oct 02, 2009

OK, this book gets down-graded because it is an excellent example of snake oil. Kool Aid.

Let me explain. I'm sure that some people love this book. However, Chris Anderson takes an excellent insight, then extends and extrapolates this insight all out of shape, drawing general conclusions about the whole economy that make absolutely no sense.

First, consider the source. Chris Anderson is the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. If you've never read Wired, it is a huge media cheerleader for the high OK, this book gets down-graded because it is an excellent example of snake oil. Kool Aid.

Let me explain. I'm sure that some people love this book. However, Chris Anderson takes an excellent insight, then extends and extrapolates this insight all out of shape, drawing general conclusions about the whole economy that make absolutely no sense.

First, consider the source. Chris Anderson is the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. If you've never read Wired, it is a huge media cheerleader for the high technology / IT industries. For example, the articles in Wired display consistent technological triumphalism, like a discussion of the "death of print books," without providing supporting data or a complete picture.

The Wired ethos permeates this book. Example: Anderson says that he can point to "hundreds" of examples of companies that typify the Long Tail approach, but spends the most page space on a select few: Amazon, Rhapsody, Google, etc. Anderson also focuses on music and books for examples, then makes generalizations about all business enterprises that have no economic basis for manufacturing or other non-entertainment industries. The chapter on aggregation seems to have the general message "push the inventory problems down to third party suppliers," yet this kind of strategy can lead to fundamental breakdowns in your ability to deliver unless you can scale like (guess who?) Amazon - especially when you are talking about cars, refrigerators, etc. that are real products.

After 100 pages I could not take this book seriously. It's a shame. The insight of the Long Tail, that you can make a business case for selling a wider diversity of products that aren't "mega-hits," makes a lot of sense. Web technology makes the selling of these products possible in a way that was not possible with brick-and-mortar stores. However, an understanding of how several successful businesses harnessed this idea is not directly generalizable to an entire economy. Making unsupported claims about supposed new "truths" does not make these claims actually true. ...more

5

Oct 17, 2006

Interesting Tidbits
- Three forces need to create the long tail:
1. democratize production: give average people the ability to create quality content (movies, music, blogs)
2. democratize distribution: technology to aggregate *all* the content in a genre (Amazon, Netflix, iTunes)
3. Connect Supply and Demand: filters to help people find the niche's they are interested in (Google, recommendations, best-seller lists)
- One quarter of Amazon's sales come from books outside its top 100,000 titles. Interesting Tidbits
- Three forces need to create the long tail:
1. democratize production: give average people the ability to create quality content (movies, music, blogs)
2. democratize distribution: technology to aggregate *all* the content in a genre (Amazon, Netflix, iTunes)
3. Connect Supply and Demand: filters to help people find the niche's they are interested in (Google, recommendations, best-seller lists)
- One quarter of Amazon's sales come from books outside its top 100,000 titles. Thus having a long tail adds ~33% to your bottom line.
- Ranking bestsellers across niche's genre's gives little value. Filters to rank items must be applied within each niche to become relevant. Goodreads could improve here.
- As the number of niche's increases, the ability of people to consume more content within the genre increases. This depends on the genre, but it gives me hope that we can increase the number of people who read through Goodreads, by creating better filters to connect readers of various niche's.
- each year 200,000 books are published in english, and fewer than 20,000 make it into a bookstore. Only 2% of the books published in 2004 sold more than 5000 copies, and can be considered profitable.
- There is another factor that determines why people create content, other than money: reputation.
- Ebay has 60 million active users ...more

1

Sep 09, 2011

I disliked this book for two reasons: I do not believe it represents any original ideas and it is, like most business books, horribly verbose. Yawn-zilla. Yawn-a-saurus rex. Avoid.

I take issue with the idea that this book even represents a body of original ideas. The long tail concept is very cute, but after reading it, I can't stop thinking about the story of Sears-Roebuck which Anderson writes about. The notion of giving people access to a plethora of products that were heretofore unobtainable I disliked this book for two reasons: I do not believe it represents any original ideas and it is, like most business books, horribly verbose. Yawn-zilla. Yawn-a-saurus rex. Avoid.

I take issue with the idea that this book even represents a body of original ideas. The long tail concept is very cute, but after reading it, I can't stop thinking about the story of Sears-Roebuck which Anderson writes about. The notion of giving people access to a plethora of products that were heretofore unobtainable has been done before, we're told. The conclusion I drew was that Amazon and other businesses like it simply do the same thing for the world today that Sears-Roebuck did back then, so that there's still nothing new under the sun. Anderson works backward, arguing that Sears-Roebuck represented an earlier, similar long tail phenomenon. The economics of "abundance" still seems to me to fall into the realm of orthodox economics of a kind Adam Smith would have well-understood: In competitive markets, price approaches marginal cost. Since bits are so cheap that we can take their cost to be negligible, we can provide more and more varied kinds of bits. Instead, Anderson seems to start by assuming this is something totally new and has to develop an elaborate mythology around it so that he'll have something to write about for 300 pages. Like the Black Swan, this book could have been 50 pages and offered as an ebook, satisfying Anderson's own long-tail definition by not fitting the typical pattern of other boring business books. ...more

2

May 29, 2009

I give up...I can't take any more of this horribly boring book. My economics textbook keeps my interest better than this, which is extremely sad. I'm giving it two stars instead of one only because it had a few good tidbits of information regarding the evolution of the music and publishing industries (there was some interesting stuff about things such as Myspace and Lulu that I hadn't heard before). None the less, this is another book about an idea that probably made a fascinating article in a I give up...I can't take any more of this horribly boring book. My economics textbook keeps my interest better than this, which is extremely sad. I'm giving it two stars instead of one only because it had a few good tidbits of information regarding the evolution of the music and publishing industries (there was some interesting stuff about things such as Myspace and Lulu that I hadn't heard before). None the less, this is another book about an idea that probably made a fascinating article in a magazine or a slightly interesting online blog, but expanding it into a book took it beyond its attention captivating capabilities. You could easily fit what the book addresses into a multi-page article without loosing any of the integrity of the theory (and without boring the reader to tears). ...more

4

Jan 29, 2009

This book is an exploration of how niche markets are on the rise courtesy of better distribution. And that's a gross summary. Much discussion is given to the rise of the digital world and how it's expanded the marketplace so that there can be a Long Tail Distribution (for you statistics nerds out there)--- beyond the major hits, you can continue to sell (for example) less popular items, and lots of them. There are markets within markets.

A very conversationally written book, by the editor of This book is an exploration of how niche markets are on the rise courtesy of better distribution. And that's a gross summary. Much discussion is given to the rise of the digital world and how it's expanded the marketplace so that there can be a Long Tail Distribution (for you statistics nerds out there)--- beyond the major hits, you can continue to sell (for example) less popular items, and lots of them. There are markets within markets.

A very conversationally written book, by the editor of Wired, it taught me a lot I didn't know about the digital age, the blogosphere, etc, and it's a fun read for entrepreneurs.

For some of us it was required reading for a class, but lemme tell you, it beat the hell out of a coursepack! ...more

4

Feb 18, 2010

I’ve been reading what I like to think of as some “business-lite” books for school, pulling me (kicking & screaming) away from my beloved novels, fictional worlds, and imaginary characters. Apparently there is little or no place for novels in business. The good news is that these business-lite books are, by their very nature, super-readable and somewhat interesting. They are also (again, I guess by their very nature) the most repetitive books imaginable. While I like novels, and have even I’ve been reading what I like to think of as some “business-lite” books for school, pulling me (kicking & screaming) away from my beloved novels, fictional worlds, and imaginary characters. Apparently there is little or no place for novels in business. The good news is that these business-lite books are, by their very nature, super-readable and somewhat interesting. They are also (again, I guess by their very nature) the most repetitive books imaginable. While I like novels, and have even read some relatively challenging ones in my time, I’m not some brainiac devotee of Ulysses and Gravity’s Rainbow and Infinite Jest (never read any of ‘em), so I don’t think I’m holding any of these books to some unattainable standard. Plain and simple: these books repeat themselves like children’s literature. Like a nursery rhyme. Reading Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail was like reading Goodnight Moon with the words “long” and “tail” replacing the words “goodnight” and “moon.”

Some theories on this:
a) The Captains (not to mention the Lieutenants & Corporals & Privates) of Industry who read these books want to have the main points drilled and re-drilled through their brains for anything to stick well enough to be integrated into their “elevator speeches.”
b) These business-lite books all begin as tiny magazine essays, little newspaper columns, or short speeches that are then fleshed out into books, but never really have enough meat on their bones to fill out an entire book-skeleton. (Gross?)
c) The writers are bad.
d) The readers are stupid.
e) All of the above?

Actually, I think it’s sort of e), except that the writers aren’t really that bad and the readers probably aren’t that stupid (maybe a little on both scores but just a little). Mostly I think there’s simply not enough substance in any of these books to fill an entire BOOK. Essay, definitely. Pamphlet, sure. Book, nope.

This is not to say that these books are not interesting. Far from it. The Long Tail was actually very interesting and helpful in putting a lot of ideas into a cohesive and compelling theory. The central thesis is that in a world of easy digital distribution, choices are so abundant that the so-called "niches" are a source of incredible growth. (I can write this from memory, so maybe having the thesis drilled into my brain over and over was, in fact, useful.) With Amazon and iTunes and Netflix (Anderson LOVES those guys!), scarcity of shelf space is no longer an issue, so the online stores can stock everything, and be able to sell a wider array of products to fewer people and still make money. Anyway, I was fascinated by the combination of not just the economic and technological, but also the cultural, analysis. Or at least the economic and technological analyses opened lots of doors to further cultural analyses.

Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded worked sort of the same way – it felt particularly cobbled together from bits and pieces of pre-existing columns, but still had some thought-provoking moments. Those thought-provoking moments, however, were buried beneath a mountain of simplistic analysis and insanely repetitive writing. After the first 100 pages you can read one out of every four paragraphs and more than follow the arguments. If you think Anderson’s writing is repetitive, Friedman’s has the quadruple whammy of being doubly repetitive AND doubly simplistic. The Long Tail : Goodnight Moon :: Hot, Flat, and Crowded : Where's Spot?

And if Hot, Flat, and Crowded is like Where's Spot?, then Larry Weber’s Marketing to the Social Web is like a finger-painting on the fridge. It almost has those huge cardboard pages that tiny, chubby fingers can turn. As with the others, the ideas it contains are not bad, it’s just a book that should have been a 10-page paper. It probably WAS at some point. Why it needed to be torturously extended over 272 pages no one will ever know. Oh wait, I might’ve just figured it out: maybe it has something to do with selling a 272-page hardback book on Amazon for $16.47 and making a whole lot more moolah from it than a 10-page paper that you can maybe post on your blog or hand out to your friends at dinner parties or something.

So I get it, Larry Weber; I understand, Thomas Friedman; I see you, Chris Anderson. But it's almost enough to make a reader feel crazy. Every page is like, “didn’t I just read this?” and then sometimes you’re like “I AM READING A SENTENCE COPIED VERBATIM FROM THREE PARAGRAPHS AGO!!!”

In conclusion, The Long Tail is by far the least annoying of the three, and it is absolutely worth reading. Hot, Flat, and Crowded – if you ever read Friedman’s columns in the Times, skip it; if you don’t ever read those columns, then maybe skim the book. Marketing to the Social Web...I think you could probably get the salient stuff from just about any blog. Including this one, if you care to ask me.

"Marketing, Spot, marketing!" ...more

5

Mar 12, 2008

I heard a clip on this book on NPR back in August and have had wanted to read this book for sometime. When I first heard about this book, we were having a conflict with one of our e-commerce customers. There SKU base kept growing and my boss kept saying they did not control their inventory. Well, here is proof positive that they did know what they were doing. The book is written by an editor of Wired magazine. The basic premise is that with infinite variety and reduced (and in many cases zero) I heard a clip on this book on NPR back in August and have had wanted to read this book for sometime. When I first heard about this book, we were having a conflict with one of our e-commerce customers. There SKU base kept growing and my boss kept saying they did not control their inventory. Well, here is proof positive that they did know what they were doing. The book is written by an editor of Wired magazine. The basic premise is that with infinite variety and reduced (and in many cases zero) distribution costs, the non-hits are where the future of profitability in business. Basically, you need low distribution/production costs (democratize production), high amount of content (democratize distribution – aggregators like Amazon and iTunes), and filters to support decision making. Some good quotes, :Walmarts shelves are a display case a mile wide and twenty-four inches deep. At first glance that may look like everything, but in a world that’s actually a mile wide and a mile deep, a veneer of variety just isn’t enough.” Why isn’t WKRP in Cincinnati out on DVD – licensing for all the classic rock that was fundamental to the TV show that can not be license for the DVD. Why is it so hard to find new releases on Netflicks. Because the Studios have a sliding scale on DVD prices that actually decrease by MONTH. So, $20+ in the first two months and sliding out to $10 by 18 months. Statistics – Average blockbuster store has 3K DVDs while NetFlicks has 60K. Average Borders has 100K books, while Amazon has 3.7M books. Walmart has 3500 CDs (or 55K songs) and Rhapsody has 1.5M songs. Internet retail is about 5% of American retail spending, but growing 25% per year. Another good point, with more options, you have a better chance to be more satisfied and also a better chance to be very unsatisfied. More options does mean more crap, but also more gems. Netflicks allows people who do not live in a university town to see foreign and independent films. ...more

4

Feb 05, 2018

I’ve read this book many years ago and revisited it now in 2018 as a way to see how many or little things have changed.

This is a book written when - quote - “YouTube was a 6 months old website”, and “Netflix will some day go into streaming rather than sending movies on DVDs”.

Definitely worth reading on the long tail theory which absolutely applies to today’s market and products. Heck we even see a long tail of products now (apps)!

4

Oct 13, 2009

The book, and its main idea of the Long Tail, has seriously affected the way I see many industries. When the digital book world started really taking off, after Amazon jumped in, I found myself referring to it in discussions of the future of the publishing industry. The internet has allowed businesses to reach consumers (and for consumers to reach businesses) who fall out of the majority--who "live" in the long tail. An important book in helping understand the effect the internet has had on The book, and its main idea of the Long Tail, has seriously affected the way I see many industries. When the digital book world started really taking off, after Amazon jumped in, I found myself referring to it in discussions of the future of the publishing industry. The internet has allowed businesses to reach consumers (and for consumers to reach businesses) who fall out of the majority--who "live" in the long tail. An important book in helping understand the effect the internet has had on retail particularly. ...more

5

Apr 11, 2008

One of the most interesting non-fiction books I've ever read. Sort of a combination of economics, technology, and culture. Anderson presents compelling arguments and data to identify, examine and extrapolate on a clear inflection point in the macro environment today. Tools of production are more readily available (think desktop publishing, blogging, and digital video), distribution is cheaper and more widely available (think Netflix, iTunes or Amazon v bricks-n-mortar), and a wide range of One of the most interesting non-fiction books I've ever read. Sort of a combination of economics, technology, and culture. Anderson presents compelling arguments and data to identify, examine and extrapolate on a clear inflection point in the macro environment today. Tools of production are more readily available (think desktop publishing, blogging, and digital video), distribution is cheaper and more widely available (think Netflix, iTunes or Amazon v bricks-n-mortar), and a wide range of recommendations / reviews / personally-tailored content identifiers are out there. A sea change is underway.

* Couldn't finish
** I had nothing else to do
*** Passed the time, would be **** for genre / author fans
**** Everyone could enjoy this book
***** Everyone should read this book, I'll read it again ...more

5

Apr 26, 2009

Chris Anderson's book can be summarized by saying that the consumer retail market these days is driven more by a bottom-up movement (what he calls "post-filters") than by top-down factors ("pre-filters"). The idea can also be synthesized by saying that "hits" are no longer as big as they once were because they now compete with individuals with louder voices.

For example, during its most popular seasons, "I Love Lucy" was watched by 70 percent of households with televisions. That kind of Chris Anderson's book can be summarized by saying that the consumer retail market these days is driven more by a bottom-up movement (what he calls "post-filters") than by top-down factors ("pre-filters"). The idea can also be synthesized by saying that "hits" are no longer as big as they once were because they now compete with individuals with louder voices.

For example, during its most popular seasons, "I Love Lucy" was watched by 70 percent of households with televisions. That kind of homogenized market in TV viewership is unheard of today. You can't draw that kind of percentage even with a presidential address. The reason is obvious: we have so many more choices. Anderson analyzes this in many markets (music, television, clothing, even the button industry) and all yield the same paradigm shift: we're moving towards a culture of niches, one that ultimately complements (not replaces) the "hits" we're used to.

This is a fantastic modern read. Anderson not only describes with detail and humor the consumerist society in which we participate, but does it with a very relaxed, colloquial tone that allows a quick, enjoyable read. ...more

4

Aug 05, 2007

one of the most important guides to the dotcom econ - although after a while you might get tired of being told of the same thing over and over again (esp Wired readers might find it annoying of being told what they've discovered a long time ago) each of the stories page after page are another nail on the coffin - and most of us down here in ANALOG INDONESIA with rolling blackouts (wiping out your lifetime of data in seconds) can just dream away. a must-read for non-practitioners, and a good one of the most important guides to the dotcom econ - although after a while you might get tired of being told of the same thing over and over again (esp Wired readers might find it annoying of being told what they've discovered a long time ago) each of the stories page after page are another nail on the coffin - and most of us down here in ANALOG INDONESIA with rolling blackouts (wiping out your lifetime of data in seconds) can just dream away. a must-read for non-practitioners, and a good confirmation for us who has an online bookstore... But then, in a fully digital life that's analyzed here, scarcity is a thing in the past. While "scarcity" is the center of "economy" as a discipline. So what would happen if scarcity is irrelevant? THERE are also two bonus revelations: DEATH OF DEWEY, the decimal system used by libraries to list & store their books collections - NOW we just type any subject/author/booktitle, like GOODREADS here, and we'll find the book - even tho' we don't even know it (a title) exists yet. Not only it renders Dewey obsolete, it will also EXPAND the universe of subject selections of the extremely provincial and limited Dewey (Dewey didn't list Islam and Hindu as part of its Religion subject, ignorant to the fact that a large part of earth's population subscribe to these two religions). More choices ARE GOOD, not paralyzing - as long as we got good selections of more choices, and assistance on getting these good recommendations (see the MIT lady's column) - for example: after the digital world offer more choices for couples, the wedding planner profession grows - where availability and convenience equal more sales. DOUBLE EFFECT of digital search: shorten search + increase sales/grow market.
Another phenomenon CA presents is "democratization of production tools" resulting in an explosion of works plus distribution channels, subcultures ("microcultures") grow, the "mass" gets less massified.. is this risking nations' disintegration? CA's optimistic that these are only extending our network's power, strengthens the bonds between us and our friends, sharing music/content, even tho' we do "egocasting" (pursuit of individual personal taste enabled by TiVo, iPods) - there's no statistics to back this optimism, tho'.. at least mainstream TV producers & daily editors should learn fast; "The Audience is the Network," summarized JibJab's guru Spiradellis, hence the phenomena of YouTube/Google Video, also blogger v. old-school journalism (see Technorati's blog prominence chart, pg 187) - if you don't have time to read the whole book (beware of the Indonesian version, they delete portions of the book - maybe because they can't find the perfect translation!!) read the 9 rules of Long Tail towards the end of the book. ...more

5

Jul 21, 2019

The book is amazing, it is just outdated, written 12 years ago, before Facebook, twitter, youtube, spotify and netflix.
We are basically living now what he described in the book as what might happen with the development of the long tail.

3

Jan 13, 2018

Such biz. books, where the author is laying out a pattern, idea or a concept, are interesting when those ideas are exemplified i.e. the cases with which the author's trying to prove their point. Those are the most interesting patches for me, though at times things just feel repetitive.

3

Dec 12, 2013

This book takes an interesting idea and stretches it out way too long, no pun intended. This could have easily been a magazine article.

5

Jan 23, 2010

Superb. Incredibly well-written and researched. Anderson is one of my favorite authors. This is one of the most important business books written in years. Read it...then read it again.

4

Jan 01, 2015

This should be required reading for anyone who wants to do business online. It's that important.

4

Nov 13, 2012

Terrific explanation of the long tail in marketing. Explained why there will always be room for good self-published authors.

4

Jun 04, 2016

Though I read the book only recently, and lot of stuff is dated, most of his ideas hold pretty solid - in a way, that is the long tail of his ideas - they continue to be as relevant as before.

4

Jan 22, 2017

This book explains how to take advantage of the Internet by offering a long tail i.e. a great variety of products. This is essentially why platforms like Amazon are so profitable. https://karlbooklover.com/the-long-ta...

0

Feb 05, 2009

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

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).

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

...more

3

Jun 13, 2012

Recommended by John Sutherland in _How Literature Works_ as providing a solution for dealing with information overload. I was a little surprised to find myself reading a book about marketing but the combination of an interesting concept and light tone (plus many many hours of subway riding) kept me reading through to the last page. Said interesting concept got much less interesting as the book wore on and I found myself reading more to see where Anderson would finally slip up and say, 'Okay, I Recommended by John Sutherland in _How Literature Works_ as providing a solution for dealing with information overload. I was a little surprised to find myself reading a book about marketing but the combination of an interesting concept and light tone (plus many many hours of subway riding) kept me reading through to the last page. Said interesting concept got much less interesting as the book wore on and I found myself reading more to see where Anderson would finally slip up and say, 'Okay, I admit that there might not actually be a good way for publishers to make boatloads of money off of the internet'. Of course, said publishers make up a big chunk of Anderson's potential market for this book (not to mention the audience for _Wired_). Doctorow published a great review of this book in the Guardian and seems to do a solid job of targeting the major logical fallacy of (near) zero distribution costs, namely that when the cost to deliver a product per customer drops to (near) zero the whole model breaks down because who's going to pay something for nothing? Ebooks are great for authors, but not so much for publishers and retailers.
The tip for dealing with information overload that Sutherland gleaned from this book, such as I was able to understand it was that websites like GoodReads, LibraryThing, Amazon, etc can use the books you've already read to come up with recommendations based on what people similar to you have read, helping you explore 'the tail' (the 80 percent of literature that is not in the mainstream canon): "The 'long tail' approach did not seem to mean keeping within frontiers (like narcotic genre-followers) but mapping out whole new, but not dauntingly large, territories, as a kind of mosaic of freshly discovered discrimination...a gigantic smorgasbord in which the onus was on the skill, and idiosyncrasy, of the consumer, no two of whom would pile their plates identically." Sutherland seems to see Anderson's point of view as being a little overly optimistic, because he points out that picking out food at a buffet is a lot different from dealing with a 'deluge' of information. The implication that the average person can eat on their own but needs someone to pick their books for them is more than a little patronizing. Certainly, there's a lot of fluff that sells out there, but who's to say what's fluff to me is fluff to you?
I think you _are_ seeing more and more small press publishers, like Small Beer Press, Soft Skull, McSweeney's etc, who represent smaller and smaller niche markets which may or may not be based on genre but work by creating small, overlapping 'tribes' of readers, not unlike what has happened in music over the past decade. At the same time, there is more and more room now for random outliers to pick up a huge readership and blow everyone out of the water with a record-breaking Kickstarter fund raising drive. Pre-selling and teaching seems like the way of the future for authors, which may seem a little depressing, but I can't say it's any worse than being forced to sell yourself to a publisher just to get your name out there. The big guys are going to get a lot smaller before all this is over, though, which I can't say I think is all that much of a bad thing. ...more

4

Jun 14, 2019

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book is a great example of a concept that should have been an essay. In fact, I understand it started out as an article; while the additional examples and anecdotes are nice, I have strong feelings about things that are longer than they need to be. I don't regret reading it, but in the future I will point people to the article rather than the book.

With unlimited supply, our assumptions about the relative roles of hits and niches were all wrong ... A Long Tail is just culture unfiltered by This book is a great example of a concept that should have been an essay. In fact, I understand it started out as an article; while the additional examples and anecdotes are nice, I have strong feelings about things that are longer than they need to be. I don't regret reading it, but in the future I will point people to the article rather than the book.

With unlimited supply, our assumptions about the relative roles of hits and niches were all wrong ... A Long Tail is just culture unfiltered by economic scarcity.

(1) the tail of available variety is far longer than we realize; (2) it's now within reach economically; (3) all those niches, when aggregated, can make up a significant market

The curse of broadcast technologies is that they are profligate users of limited resources ... this is the world of scarcity. Now, with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance.

What I would consider to be the main thesis of the book:

A very, very big number multiplied by a relatively small number is still equal to a very, very big number.

the root calculus of the Long Tail: the lower the costs of selling, the more you can sell.

One side observation that reminds me of how much recommendations matter in finding a job, even though theoretically job creators and job seekers should be able to find each other easier than ever before:

Recommendations serve as shortcuts through the thicket of information

if left unchecked, noise - random content or products of poor quality - can kill a market.

Side note that leads to the book I'm now reading:

One of the consequences of living in a hit-driven culture is that we tend to assume that hits are a far bigger share of the market than they really are. Instead, they are the rare exception ... The problem is that we have a hard time putting rare events in context.

One explanation for why the Boomers and the Millenials will never see eye-to-eye:

We've had a change from "I want to be normal" to "I want to be special."

A fun little factoid that makes me rage:

Recall the early attempts to sell movies at retail for $70 to $80 - a price that was calculated based on the amount of money a typical family would pay at the box office to see their favorite movie two to three times.

Long Tail businesses treat consumers as individuals, offering mass customization as an alternative to mass-market fare.

In the end I gave this book 4 stars because the concept is pretty important, but it's a low 4. ...more

5

Mar 20, 2018

This is an amazing book by the 2005 Times top 100 and Editor of Wired magazine is 10 years old, however, it was a prophetic account of how the new business models of the information age are changing human society.
1- In the old model we were limited by geography in everything from local interests to products we consume, massive supply chains of the 20th century replaced that with mass production and national/global interests and products
2- supply chain models suffered a physical constraints of This is an amazing book by the 2005 Times top 100 and Editor of Wired magazine is 10 years old, however, it was a prophetic account of how the new business models of the information age are changing human society.
1- In the old model we were limited by geography in everything from local interests to products we consume, massive supply chains of the 20th century replaced that with mass production and national/global interests and products
2- supply chain models suffered a physical constraints of scarce shelf space, inventories, broadcast time, etc which meant a pre-filtering process had to be established to decide which products should occupy those limited spaces, hence, a strong consumption bias emerged for top products and top songs creating the 80-20 rule, i.e., 20% of hits dominated 80% of demand
3- Modern information age business models broke away from the constraints of physical atoms to the abundance of digital bits, e.g., amazon, iTunes changed this formula by making it very cheap to offer millions of products to consumers who in turn started moving away from the top hits down the curve to the long tail of niche offerings. the 80-20 rule of traditional manufactured goods has been replaced by a long tail of low volume products catering to every consumer needs
4- The web, YouTube and eBay went even further to democratize supply creating a market place where millions of suppliers meet millions of consumers over billions of offerings.
5- such long tail of products required a new mechanism of guidance and filtering (post-filtering) to enable sifting and finding what they need in the jungle of products along the long tail.

The audiobook has a treat interview with Chris Anderson at the end where he talks about his extraordinary career and future thoughts

Highly recommended to all business readers ...more

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Dec 17, 2017

This book gives you a new way to think about the way we create products. Consumers want hyper specific content. Being a generalist is not a good idea when creating products. Selling your product to everyone is not the goal. "Everyone" is not your market. You need an ideal customer in mind. Bottlenecks like the cost to get into a business are going away. For example: anyone can not sell t-shirts on Amazon with no overhead. In the past I would have had to get a way to print the shirts, acquire the This book gives you a new way to think about the way we create products. Consumers want hyper specific content. Being a generalist is not a good idea when creating products. Selling your product to everyone is not the goal. "Everyone" is not your market. You need an ideal customer in mind. Bottlenecks like the cost to get into a business are going away. For example: anyone can not sell t-shirts on Amazon with no overhead. In the past I would have had to get a way to print the shirts, acquire the shirts, build a website, drive traffic, and fulfill orders. All of that is now automated and possible for anyone to do this using Merch by Amazon print on demand. Getting into business is a lot easier today. The Long Tail is from 2006, so you will see a lot of changes that have occurred in the last 10 years. The future of business seems to be selling less of more products. ...more