Read Extracts from The Long Tail

Click through the chapters on the left to begin reading edited extracts from the book everyone is talking about - or just start with the introduction .

If you've already read the book, you could skip straight to the exclusive new afterword to the paperback .

With his brilliant theory of the Long Tail – a powerful new economic force in a world where the internet allows access to almost unlimited choice – Chris Anderson has identified an important truth about our economy and culture. In a Long Tail world, the future does not lie in hits – the high-volume end of a traditional demand curve – but in what used to be regarded as misses, the curve's endlessly long tail.

In this expanded and updated edition, published for the first time in paperback, he examines how niche interests, which make up the millions of misses, have come together in a global network, stimulating innovation on an unprecedented scale.

The result, he argues, is a cultural richness in which enthusiasms previously dismissed as ‘minority’ thrive and everybody everywhere can find something to their taste.