You may well have heard of the Long Tail by now. It’s all based on an article that this book’s author, and Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson first published in said magazine a couple of years ago. Simply put, it’s all about the value of the “long tail” of sales beyond the bestsellers, with plenty of case studies examining iTunes and Amazon data that shows that the vast majority of their sales are in much smaller units further down the tail.
The theory is fine as far as it goes with plenty of cases where it is true. I suppose it works best when keeping a vast inventory is minimal in cost – think eBay where it’s the vendors who hold stock, or iTunes, where the virtual inventory is a bit of hard disk space. But it’s true that it doesn’t work absolutely everywhere, and I’d have liked a few more “real world” examples beyond the well examined tech companies.
The book’s relatively short, but it still feels as though the argument could have been made in slightly fewer words.
Slate had a worthwhile piece on the book the other day.