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The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand

Author: Chris Anderson
Publisher: Random House Business Books
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

11 reviews
Sales Rank: 791

Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.9

ISBN: 1844138518
EAN: 9781844138517
ASIN: 1844138518

Publication Date: May 3, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new book dispatched from stock in the UK

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Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

Simple but infectious May 25, 2008
Overall I really liked The Long Tail, I found it very interesting, well written and easy to read. The only slight criticism I have, which is the reason for the 4 star rating, is that is does feel as though it could have been shortened a little without losing any of the content.

The overarching idea of the book is that if you can drive down the costs of producing, distributing and finding content, people will start to move away from "hit-driven" mass-market content and start to find a world filled with niches that fill their desires more completely. It's not a particularly complex idea but it has some interesting potential consequences, as highlighted throughout the book.

Whether or not you should completely buy into this, or how far you may see it changing the way people find and consume things such as music and entertainment, is open to debate. What I can say is that since reading the book I have begun to notice elements of the Long Tail in action in many different places.

3 out of 5 stars

Uneven May 25, 2008
Thought-provoking from both a cultural and commercial point of view, but it goes on a bit! Would have been better at half the length.

4 out of 5 stars

Simple, Smart Premise No Longer Ignored May 5, 2008
"The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand" 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: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand" by Chris Anderson.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

5 out of 5 stars

a bold and refreshing view on business February 18, 2008
Chris Anderson explains what could be seen as one of the most important new concepts in marketing these days. The book is very well written, and the message is carried all the way through. The last 80 pages or so feels like a slight repetition of the first part, but not enough that it should take away from the value of the book.

Anyone involved in web applications, or marketing and sales in general should read this.

4 out of 5 stars

ideas for ethical marketing December 17, 2007
Anderson first coined the term The Long Tail back in an article for Wired magazine in 2004. The essential point he was making was that in a digital world of the likes of amazon.com, netflix and youtube the collective revenue publishers and e-commerce players make from the sales of the 10,000s of back stock is actually higher than the revenue they make out of the handful of mega hits each year. Anderson's key point was the economies of scale, distribution through the net, and low cost of downloading means that in certain markets- like books, films, music the idea of the market needs to be re-defined into thousands of mini niches, with the opinion formers who set fashion and define cool no longer the broadcasters of TV and national press but individual bloggers and writers who each contribute to defining the identity of each niche. Now linking this to green or ethical may seem tangential but in fact it isn't, ethical consumerism is actually a series of niches, from the healthy shopper who buys organic because it is perceived as more nutritious, to the raw diet vegan, those who put global social justice above and support fairtrade to those who think that no organic goods, fairtade or not, should be flown. The ethical consumer market is actually a mass of niches, with each individual's ethics and lifestyle informing their choices, and information and education constantly defining and refining each individuals' habits. The key lesson I got from this book is that a new green economy could utilise the power of the net by providing united distribution networks that link the myriad of small producers, service providers and information /education sources. The cross referencing nature of databases means that the full range of ethical services and products can be defined by the individual as they choose their key motivators- giving local services to one, fairtrade to others, those products and services produced by co-ops to yet others.