Book Review: The Long Tail
Back in June, Wired editor Chris Anderson offered copies of his Long Tail book to the first 100 bloggers who wrote to him promising to review the book on their blogs.
I duly wrote in and received my copy. This was around the time of our public beta launch, and predictably it took me ages to finish the book. Since then I’ve been plagued by a guilty conscience for having failed to hold up my end of the bargain. So in an effort to assuage my remorse, here is perhaps the least topical tech business book review of all time.
I was blown away when I read Chris’s original Wired article, not because the idea of power law distributions was new to me, but because he encapsulated a revolutionary (for once the word is not an overstatement) shift in the media industry in a perfect two-word sound bite. Many people had intuitively grasped that something big was going on, but it was not until the article helped focus their minds that that they were able to put their fingers on what, exactly, it was.
Considering the success of the Long Tail article, one might justifiably question the need for a full-length book on the topic. As it transpires, the latter expands on the article’s theme along two axes, and its main weakness is that it tries to be two things at once. Is it a general overview of power law dynamics in the market, ranging from 19th century department stores to KitchenAid blenders? Or is it a treatise on the shift of power in the media industry from conglomerates to small content producers?
The latter is a topic that greatly interests me, and the book does a very good job of illustrating the changes currently underway in the entertainment sector. I’ve long argued that all three of the traditional strengths of large media companies — finance, marketing and distribution — are trending towards irrelevancy as digital content moves online. Chris singles out exactly these areas and devotes large sections (even chapters) to each one. He makes a bit too much of the idea that hits are an artificial concept invented by Big Media rather than, as I believe, intrinsically linked to human nature. He would do better to keep the emphasis more consistently on the rise of niche content, rather than the decline of mainstream fare. But overall his portrayal of how the media business is changing is one of the best I’ve encountered.
Applying the long tail concept to areas outside of entertainment strikes me as less interesting and more of a stretch. Worse, by trying to do too much the Long Tail ends up significantly too long (like so many other business-themed books). One of the defining tenets of “new media” is that content can be the length it wants to be, not the length that best lends itself to sales through traditional channels. The Long Tail is a worthwhile purchase and a good read in its traditional book format, but if it had applied its own conclusions to itself, it would have been an even better one at, let’s say, 100-odd pages.
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I thought the article was to long and it wasn’t interesting. i didn’t even read the whole thing because it didn’t interest me
Comment by NOT TELLING — 11/22/2006 @ 12:08 am