BISG in the News

Making the Long Tail Pay

By Michael Cader (Publishers Lunch) -- Wired editor and author of the forthcoming THE LONG TAIL: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (Hyperion; July) Chris Anderson served as lead-off speaker for the third annual Making Information Pay conference convened by the BISG--once again before a full room of attendees.

Anderson's basic question--not fully answered today--was, "Does more choice mean more demand?" So while it's common to lament a publishing world exploding with product as providing too many books, does the explosion of options and ease of availability grow sales overall? In analyzing services like Netflix, Amazon and Rhapsody, Anderson has found that "demand actually followed supply."

In general, he envisions a world for entertainment producers of all kinds in which "you'll settle on markets where bricks-and-mortar represents only half the market, and the online component represents the other half the market."

Similarly, in the book itself, Anderson says: "If Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is already a third the size of the existing market--and what's more, it's growing quickly. If these growth trends continue, the potential book market may actually be half again as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the economics of scarcity."

Of course some factors that give Anderson confidence about the overall consumer market for books--like the growth of the used book market, and the growth of POD-driven books and publishers--are huge challenges for traditional businesses. As is the prospect, asserted in Anderson's book, that "98 percent of books are non-commercial, whether they are intended that way or not."

But back to the other hand, again from the book, he notes: "Bringing niches within reach reveals latent demand for non-commercial content. Then, as demand shifts toward the niches, the economics of providing them improve further, and so on, creating a positive feedback loop that will transform entire industries--and the culture--for decades to come."

I'm a step ahead, however, in that I've read the galley of Anderson's absorbing and provocative book, in preparation for a one-on-one interview he and I will have at BEA. His research and interpretation provides lots of lenses for rethinking our own industry, and trying to take what he establishes as economic fact--the long tail of sales--and harness it in a fast-changing sales and information landscape. There are also plenty of implications for some of the what-do-you-do-about-Amazon 2.0/Web 2.0-thoughts that I introduced in my sermon last week as well.

So for now I'll finish with another quote from the book particularly relevant with last week's Amazon discussion still fresh in mind: "Consumers must be given ways to find niches that suit their particular needs and interests. A range of tools and techniques--from recommendations to rankings--are effective at doing this. These "filters" can drive demand down the Tail."

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