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The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand
 
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The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand (Paperback)

by Chris Anderson (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
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Product Description
What happens when there is almost unlimited choice? When everything becomes available to everyone? And when the combined value of the millions of items that only sell in small quantities equals or even exceeds the value of a handful of best-sellers? In this ground-breaking book, Chris Anderson shows that the future of business does not lie in hits - the high-volume end of a traditional demand curve - but in what used to be regarded as misses - the endlessly long tail of that same curve. As our world is transformed by the Internet and the near infinite choice it offers consumers, so traditional business models are being overturned and new truths revealed about what consumers want and how they want to get it. Chris Anderson first explored the Long Tail in an article in Wired magazine that has become one of the most influential business essays of our time. Now, in this eagerly anticipated book, he takes a closer look at the new economics of the Internet age, showing where business is going and exploring the huge opportunities that exist: for new producers, new e-tailers, and new tastemakers.He demonstrates how long tail economics apply to industries ranging from the toy business to advertising to kitchen appliances. He sets down the rules for operating in a long tail economy. And he provides a glimpse of a future that's already here.

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The new economics of culture and commerce

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4.0 out of 5 stars (20 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars When Variety Costs Little More, People Enjoy Having More of It, 8 Oct 2007
By Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)      
When you want to eat ice cream outside your home, do you go to a store that offers only chocolate and vanilla . . . or do you go where there are many more choices? Most people will do the latter. That's the basic point of this book. If you're satisfied with knowing that point, you don't need to read the book. Instead, you could settle for Mr. Anderson's article in the October 2004 issue of Wired.

But if you are like the growing legions of people who enjoy knowing more about the quirks of micro-economics (such as those who were intrigued by The Tipping Point, Freakonomics and Fooled by Randomness), The Long Tail will provide much entertainment.

Let me explain what a long tail is. If you plot the popularity of various products (say, books on Amazon) with the most popular products at the left, the left part of the curve will be very vertical (the head) and there will be a long list of items to the right that will have relatively few sales (the tail). Mr. Anderson's point is that as it becomes economically viable to produce and distribute more low-volume products (such as print-on-demand books and e-books), there will be more items available to purchase at any outlet . . . and the length the tail to the right will grow. As more outlets can afford to make these items available, the thickness of the tail will also grow.

A physical store will only distribute a small percentage of the items, stopping where the offering no longer adds to its targeted rate of profits. An on-line store will have far more items (such as Amazon), appeal to more customers and sell lots of its volume in relatively unpopular items. The author estimates that 25% of Amazon's book sales volume, for instance, comes from outside the 100,000 top selling books.

Here's where Mr. Anderson begins to lose his way: He tries to describe the sociological implications. He sees, for example, a loss of common cultural items of the sort that talking about the Beatles appearing on Ed Sullivan once provided. He imagines a world in which everyone drifts off into various different niches and the size of the head becomes less vertical. While that may be true, it doesn't correctly forecast the amount of commonality in the culture. The sales of any given item over time may well be in both the head and the tail. Or an item could be a sleeper and always be in the tail, but if enough people buy it, the item will become part of the common culture. In addition, some elements of common culture don't appear in sales curves. I'm sure that yesterday's arrests in the alleged plot to bomb a number of airplanes have already become part of the common culture.

I won't go on to point out his other errors. I'm sure you'll notice them for yourself.

The other disappointment was that he doesn't do a very good job of describing strategy choices for product producers. It seems to me that the long tail is simply another argument in favor of intense individual product and service customization of the sort that Dell has been giving us for years in computers and related equipment.

My grade of 3 stars for the book is 5 stars for long-tail trivia and 1 star for sociological and producer analysis.

If you haven't read any of the following books, The Tipping Point, Freakonomics and Fooled by Randomness, I recommend that you read those long before you get around this one. They are much better books about micro-economic implications.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book , 5 Jul 2007
I started reading The Long Tail straight after reading "Why The World Is Full of Useless Things" by Steve McKevitt which was published last year. These are two great books to read together offering a much broader analysis than they do on their own.

I think we've got it in ourselves to move into a more ethical way of being - and the potentially limitless choice of the internet might paradoxically bring that about, as per Long Tail, we stop being passive consumers of mass produced crap, we develop ever more niched niches for our little individual selves to consume and create from, power really does pass back to consumers (sort of) etc. I urge you to read both.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A 'Tipping Point' Type of Book, 7 Jun 2007
By Michael Beale (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This book helped me realise how the web (an enabler for huge choice at low cost) could provide individuals with new markets and real opportunities. Inspirational.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Riveting Read
I found this an interesting read. Anderson makes a good point with great erudition. The basic premise is that the far end of a demand curve can generate large volumes of income... Read more
Published 10 days ago by Mr. I. D. Shannon

3.0 out of 5 stars great concept
Now an accepted concept as illustrated beautifully by bookseller such as abebooks and bookdepository. Read more
Published 3 months ago by karen bennett

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, researched and thorough
I found this book an interesting read that's made me approach the day-to-day considerations of business and opportunity from a new angle. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Hypernik

3.0 out of 5 stars the long tail of books on the impact of the Web ?
Good to great - after 150 pages you get it - I would love to hear chris anderson speak on the subject - data is intresting , shame more companies would not share their... Read more
Published 5 months ago by N. O. Donnell

5.0 out of 5 stars Simple concept yet important consequences
This is an extremely simple yet important book about the effect of digital goods and their availability via the internet on the economics of product variety. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Norberto Amaral

4.0 out of 5 stars insightful
This book is excellent to understand how you can use the internet for marketing a wide variety of products. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Elis

2.0 out of 5 stars Repetitive
Sometimes a book may have excellent concept and ideas, but fails on execution. In my opinion, The Long tail is one of them; when the same theory is being presented in a book... Read more
Published 6 months ago by O. Cheng

5.0 out of 5 stars A winning concept
Chris Andreson has written a down-to-earth, incisive and savvy page-turner to tell the story of how the almost unlimited choice brought about new internet-driven technologies has... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Oscar Del Santo

3.0 out of 5 stars A mixed bag
I finished this book sometime ago, but had to ponder for a while before writing about it. My dilemma revolves around two points. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Alan Lenton

4.0 out of 5 stars Simple but infectious
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... Read more
Published 13 months ago by P. Robertshaw

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