The Long Tail

THE

LONG TAIL
Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

Enter

CHRIS ANDERSON

To Anne

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Introduction
1 . The Long Tail 2 . The Rise and Fall of the Hit 3 . A Short History of the Long Tail 4 . The Three Forces of the Long Tail 5 . The New Producers 6 . The New Markets 7 . The New Tastemakers 8 . Long Tail Economics 9 . The Short Head

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CONTENTS

1 0 . The Paradise of Choice 1 1 . Niche Culture 1 2 . The Infinite Screen 1 3 . Beyond Entertainment 1 4 . Long Tail Rules 1 5 . The Long Tail of Marketing

168 177 192 201 217 225 247 249 255 259

Coda: Tomorrow’s Tail Epilogue Notes on Sources and Further Reading Index About the Author Praise Credits Cover Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThis book has benefited from the help and collaboration of literally thousands of people, thanks to the relatively open process of having it start as a widely read article and continue in public as a blog of work in progress. The result is that there are many people to thank, both here and in the chapter notes at the end of the book. First, the person other than me who worked the hardest, mywife, Anne. No project like this could be done without a strong partner. Anne was all that and more. Her constant support and understanding made this possible, and the price was significant, from all the Sundays taking care of the kids while I worked at Starbucks to the lost evenings, absent vacations, nights out not taken, and other costs of an all-consuming project. But more than that, she was mysounding board, my first reader, my counsel, confidante, and an endless source of encouragement and advice. (Our young children—Daniel, Erin, Toby, and Isabel—also spent a year without seeing much of their father, and I thank them for rising to the occasion with sterling behavior and, one hopes, no permanent scars.) In the research and outlining phase of the book, I was fortunate to have had the use ofperhaps two of the best working and thinking

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

spaces on the planet. Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe, our friends, neighbors, and the founders of Wired, graciously lent me their beautiful Berkeley offices for several months in the summer of 2005. (I was a “scholar in residence,” a title that made me feel smarter all by itself.) And another dear friend, PeterSchwartz, gave me space in the equally beautiful Emeryville offices of his Global Business Network, where I did much of my later-stage brainstorming and whiteboarding with my crack writing assistant, Steven Leckart. My other invaluable partners were my team at Wired, particularly Bob Cohn and Thomas Goetz, the executive and deputy editors, respectively. They rose to the occasion brilliantly, managing toboth encourage me and cover for me as the book consumed more and more of my time. Bob also edited the original Long Tail article, helping me refine the arguments and phrasing, a contribution that continues to pay dividends. Melanie Cornwell’s comments on the manuscript caught many pop culture errors and otherwise made it smarter. Also thanks to Blaise Zerega, who as managing editor kept the wheelsfrom falling off while I was only semi-present, and Joanna Pearlstein, our research director, who helped with many of the early infographics. And special thanks to Si Newhouse for entrusting me with his remarkable platform for ideas in the first place and generously allowing me to take the time off to expand one into a book. Many academics contributed in important ways to quantifying Long Taileffects and exploring their implications. Erik Brynjolfsson from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Jeffrey Hu from Purdue’s Krannert School of Management did some of the early work on estimating Amazon’s Long Tail, which gave me both an analytical framework on which to build the theory and the confidence to know that it could be done. Their continuing research in this area is fascinating, and...