Newsmaker: An author with a 'long tail'

(continued from previous page)

What are the ideas that the book goes into that you couldn't with a magazine-length article?
The article focused on the long tail and entertainment: DVDs, books and music. The book focuses on the long tail beyond entertainment. We look at Google as the long tail of advertising and eBay as the long tail of hard goods. Then there are examples that don't have much to do with the Internet at all. We looked at KitchenAid mixers, as they had a long tail of color. It turns out that there are many colors available and people are using the pull-down menu to pick colors no one expected would be popular. It was tangerine last year. I also have a chapter on long-tail economics. I can talk about where more choice is better and when it can be oppressive.

What was the most surprising thing you came across in your research?
The most surprising thing was industries that understood the long tail that I hadn't anticipated. When you think of the long tail, it's basically a large number of niches that compete with one-size-fits-all mass-market products. There are so many precursors. You know, fashion has always had boutique and couture. And you can think of that of as a long tail of clothing.

In food, we've seen the rise of organic and artisanal food as the long tail of agriculture in a sense. It used to be difficult to have that in the supermarkets. But what I learned is that even in the supermarkets because of efficiencies and supply chains and stock management technology, there's been more than a doubling in products on the shelf. Even Wal-Mart is now offering organic, which is a day many thought would never come.

How should we feel about the decline of the blockbuster and the rise...on that far side of the tail?
I think we should feel good about it. It's not the end of the blockbuster, which will always be there. But they now have to compete with these grassroots phenomena that are coming from producers and bands that weren't signed to labels and people uploading to YouTube who never would have gone through a traditional television network.

Some of the most surprising and resonant bits of our culture right now are coming from the least expected places: The increasing number of bands that are rising up without a label or deal--the Arctic Monkeys, for example--and the number of artists at the top who are choosing to go forward without a label. You know, Thom Yorke from Radiohead is considering that, as is Beck. This suggests that we're going to have a richer culture not just because we can pull and pick from a wider selection of products, but also because more of us can make products.

So if you are an established business, how can you capitalize on the long tail?
Take used book stores, for instance, which are a classic declining business. Ten years ago, they were marginalized by the rise of the book superstores. And the Internet took it even further. You went into a used bookstore and you didn't know what they had. If you're looking for something, you didn't know where to find it and chances are they didn't have it. It was very hard to see a future there.

And then they all put their inventories online and they integrated them through services like Alibris. Now used books are the fastest-growing part of the book industry and represent about 10 percent of the global industry. And I think that not only is it good for them, but it's good for us because many books that were out of print are now available because buying a used book is now as easy as buying a new book.

How can a brand new company leverage the long tail?
Right now, most of the business opportunities are in the aggregators...They're the ones that can basically offer the whole tail. Amazon is an aggregator, Netflix is an aggregator, iTunes is an aggregator. But in a sense Google is also an aggregator in that it reaches over the entire Internet and filters it and makes sense of it so that people can find what they want.

But you know, it's "early days" yet. I mean, right now iTunes is the major music service, but it's really oriented toward pop. If you're into classical music, you'll find that the way iTunes presents music--which is oriented around albums and bands and tracks--doesn't really do justice to the notion of conductors and composers and soloists and lead violins and that sort of thing. So I think this might be an opportunity for niche aggregators who really do focus on one genre, one kind of content and do it very well.

Who are the most important people in the long tail?
The producers. I mean the long tail is made up of millions and millions of people who are creating content and finding an audience for it. Look at all the bloggers out there. They have essentially extended the tail of media a millionfold because it's so easy to do so and they have something to say.

So I think that the real lesson of "The Long Tail" is that that notion that professionals produce and amateurs consume is really being blurred and we're realizing that amateurs often have as much as to contribute as the professionals do and there are so many more of them. Wikipedia, I think, is perhaps the best example of that.

Should there be a long tail of aggregators, as well as of content?
Yeah. You know, these are early days yet. In things like music, iTunes does have a dominant share?I suspect that there are (going to be) dozens of online music services. As people start to value differentiation and value, the services that offer something other than one-size-fits (will join) a long tail of aggregators.

More Newsmakers