Book review: The Long Tail

When I first started teaching my ECONS102 class in 2005 (it was ECON110 in those days), one of the topics was media economics. It was interesting to teach media economics then, in particular because the media industry had been going through years of change. One of the substantial changes was the bifurcation of the market into a small number of large media firms, creating mainstream content designed for widespread consumption, and a large (and seemingly growing) number of small media firms, focused on niche sub-markets. The interesting thing was how a large number of small firms could manage to co-exist alongside the media behemoths.

Essentially, that idea of a 'long tail' of niche products or services is the topic of Chris Anderson's 2006 book, The Long Tail, which I just finished reading. The book got a huge amount of press at the time of its release, and was based on a widely acclaimed 2004 article by the same title published in Wired. I wish I had read it at the time, as it would have added a substantial breadth to the arguments in my ECON110 class. However, now in 2020, the arguments haven't been superseded (if anything the opposite), but they seem very much mainstream. So much so that a book devoted to them seems mostly unnecessary - this is why the content on media markets in ECONS102 focuses much less on the bifurcation of the market.

I still found the book to be an interesting read nonetheless, and found myself nodding along with many of the ideas. However, some of the examples seemed a little strained. For instance, the claim that the Dewey Decimal System is no longer fit-for-purpose because it makes it too difficult to find the book you want, may be true, but in a digital world it kind of irrelevant. It ignores the fact that any categorisation of products (including barcodes, or RFID tags), requires an accompanying search technology. In fact, the move to digitisation essentially makes the particular categorisation that is used unimportant, but it doesn't mean that the Dewey Decimal System could not be the categorisation of choice.

There were a few other foibles, like characterising demand curves incorrectly (they show quantity demanded against price, not sales against ranking) and arguing that the world is moving away from scarcity (it isn't - something will always be scarce, like time, or energy, or social status), which put me off. On the other hand, the sections on mass customisation were not only interesting but remain very relevant today. A sequel to this book could easily build on that material, and as it turns out, Anderson's 2014 book Makers appears to do just that.

Overall, if you were looking for a starter book to explain "market fragmentation and consumer demand for niche products", this might be a good place to start.