This book falls in the "I wanted to like it more" category. The Long Tail as a theory is pretty powerful and makes valid sense..but bringing it back to the same examples (Google and iTunes) became tiresome. I get it..they're groundbreaking (We also get your love of Indie/House music) but try to increase your purview to other industries. As I finished the final page I thought "Did I like this book" and the answer was "Meh".

An extremely approachable, well researched & well presented work, presenting a fascinating view point of the economic effects we as a people are experiencing from the rapid progress realised in the context of the information age through the associated digital technology; designed, developed & distributed.

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.

I liked how Chris predicted the future market before 10 years, however you would find the concept and writing a bit outdated considering the internet era we are in today. Moreover, the structure of the book is a bit confusing with some concepts are repeated over and over.

This book was a bit of a weird read because it was written far enough ago now that a bunch of its references and case studies are out of date. For example, it was talking about Blockbuster and Napster, which are hardly relevant in 2020.

But still, the ideas in this book are super important and have influenced a whole generation of businessmen and marketers, and so even though bits of it felt out of date, it was still very much worth reading. True, if you’re already familiar with the overall concept of the long tail then there’s nothing much here to learn about, but if you’re not then I’d suggest giving this a read to make sure that you are.

I mean, with that said, there’s also a whole heap of research and case studies here for you to learn from, although again, you should remember that some of them are out of date. Honestly, this is such a seminal book that the chances are that there’s an updated edition knocking around, so maybe have a look to check that out before buying a used copy, like I did.

But overall, I would of course recommend it if you’re the entrepreneurial type. If not, there’s not much point, although it could give you a greater insight into the way things actually work.

Anderson displays the art of repeating the same idea in a multitude of ways. Some valid points in the democratisation of production, distribution and aggregators and too many similar examples bringing across the same point. Perhaps one interesting idea about Chevy's supposed ad failure and lack of intervention which was actually a success in the larger picture.

TL;DR: Meh. Read the review instead of the book.

Another one of those superficial magazine articles forced into books. 2.5/5 rounded down to 2 instead of rounding up because it fails in its grandiose claims though this would typically be a solid 3. No it doesn’t articulate anything not understood within the framework of conventional economics. It’s techno-optimistic in that uniquely Valley way - the author notably dismisses the concept of news bubbles in a sentence. Retrospectively, not one of his finer moments. Lastly, for a supposedly futuristic book it is rather tame and doesn’t really try any new prediction (for which at least one could declare it bold) and only extrapolates further on the most obvious trends - anywhere there has been a modification to the model the book has little descriptive power (subscription economies).

This is a good introduction to the idea of long tail. The book seems dated from the examples cited. The writer has added some clarifications in the end but I believe there is need for a significant overhaul. The idea of long tail has exploded in the internet era and needs more focus. This is definitely a good starting point.

Livro excelente sobre o mercado de nichos. Anderson explica como a soma da demanda dos milhares de menores nichos pode ser mais interessante que o mercado de massa.

Essencial para quem trabalha com marketplace ou oferece soluções para diferentes perfis de clientes.

Because online stores don't have to worry about floor space for products, they can offer almost anything.

There, that's everything you will ever learn from this piece of shit. I swear the man is getting paid by the word.

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)!

The idea is simple and this business model could prosper thanks to the social network/internet.
20/80 fits in all models which is astonishingly coincidence. I think just few examples could have explain perfectly about the long tail. This reminds me of the game business on cell phone, unlike standard game business that you need a strong structure of game frames, cell phone APP provides simple and time killing games such as Angry Bird. Sugar crush..etc. They are the successfully example of long tail (Niche market ) which actually dominated even more public than real game world.