The Long Tail cover
  1. Introduction
  2. iTunes Killed The Radio Star
  3. The 98 Percent Rule
  4. How Technology Is Turning Mass Markets Into Millions Of Niches
  5. The End Of The Hit Parade
  6. Long Tails Everywhere
  7. Make It, Get It Out There, And Help Me Find It
  8. The Wikipedia Phenomenon
  9. Lonely Island
  10. The Ants Have Megaphones. What Are They Saying?
  11. The Wal-Mart Effect
  12. We Are Entering An Era Of Unprecedented Choice. And That's A Good Thing
  13. What's It Like To Live In A Long Tail World?
  14. Video After Television
  15. eBay - How Far Can The Niche Revolution Reach?
  16. Coda: Tomorrow's Tail
    • Will Wright and Spore
  17. Exclusive: The Latest On The Long Tail

This site contains edited extracts from Chris Anderson's acclaimed business book The Long Tail, published in the U.K. by Random House.

The ideas from this book have spread quickly beyond just the web - and are now part of the very way we look at business and culture in the 21st century.

We urge you to read and share these ideas under the Creative Commons terms below.

(You could also just buy the book )

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial - No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

An Apt Studio site.

Read Chris Anderson's Long Tail Blog

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Will Wright and Spore

You can get a glimpse of this already. Will Wright, the legendary video-game designer, is putting the finishing touches on his next game, Spore. In it, you’ll be able to evolve your own creature, imbuing it with traits and characteristics of your own design.

If you like your work, you’ll be able to upload the creation to the Spore servers. And then, for about $20, you can have it 3D printed into a real action figure—colors, texture, and all. Each one is unique and will show up at your front door in a matter of a week or two.

Think of it as the Long Tail of merchandising, and a mind-blowing glimpse of what’s still to come.

Like everything else, tomorrow’s Long Tail of Things will be aggregated, efficiently stored as bits, and then delivered to your home via optical fiber. Only then will it be materialized, coming full circle to atoms again at the point of consumption.

It sounds like science fiction, but then again so did having an entire music library in your pocket just a decade ago.

In the worlds of entertainment and information, we’ve already lost the capacity constraints of shelf space and channels, along with their one-size-fits-all demands.

Soon we may lose the capacity constraints of mass production, too. The explosion of variety we’ve seen in our culture thanks to digital efficiencies will extend to every other part of our lives.

The question tomorrow will not be whether more choice is better, but rather what do we really want? On the infinite aisle, everything is possible.

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‘Read this brilliant and timely book if you want to get a look at the future of business’
Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google

‘The natural successor to the “tipping point” in the field of big business ideas’
Guardian

"The ideas in this book are going to be talked about for the next ten years... get a copy now. It's worth it." Seth Godin

The Long Tail is now available in paperback. You can buy direct from Random House UK, Amazon.co.uk and Waterstones, or find it in any good bookstore.

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