Long Tail Debunked

The Register's Andrew Orlowski reports on researchers who refuted Chris Anderson's theory of the long tail. See Chopping the Long Tail Down to Size

(The Long Tail theory claims there is much money to be made in selling a few copies of many things.)

I'm a long tail kind of guy (no crude jokes, pls), selling modest amounts of  over 40 titles of ebooks, plus other publishing activities. After reading Mr Anderson's book, however, I had found a fundamental flaw in his reasoning:

An Amazon or a Rhapsody might make a wack of $$$ from selling just 1 or 2 copies of a million slow selling books and CDs. But the authors, musicians, and publishers of these works do not. Folks cannot make a living selling one or two copies a day of their work -- even if it is in digital format and so lacks production and distribution costs.

It gets worse. The Amazons and Rhapsodys of the world have no interest in stocking slow-selling products. Amazon's "3 million books" claim is a myth. The bulk of "books" are phantoms, mere entries in a database provided by publishers.

In most cases, Amazon won't sell you a long tail book, because it cannot. Either the books are out of print, or else the communication link between Amazon and the publisher is broken, and so your book order is perpetually delayed another "3 months." 

Instead of the Long Tail, my theory is that of the Boutique Seller. A significant number people can make a living from selling to a modest customer base. Selling ones and twos is only a hobby; selling hundreds or thousands is a living. 

Comments

[fcsuper]

Interesting article. My tail is very short, with only 3 ebooks offered. I think I've cleared something like $5 for the year so far. :) Of course, 3 x 1000 x $5 wouldn't be bad, but that would interfer with my life as I couldn't make a living off of $15000/yr.

[Garth Coleman]

Reminds me of one of my favorite cartoons:
http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/images/shortail.jpg

[Franco Folini]

According to Chris Anderson the long tail works when you have (1) close to zero storage costs for each item in your catalog and you have (2) a "very long" list of item in the tail.
As author of e-books, you meet the first requirement but not the second (40 titles is not a long tail).

IMHO nothing wrong with the theory as long as we are within the two main constraints.

Amazon can benefit from the long tail selling physical books because they outsource storage of items in the long tail to authors and manufacturer reducing their cost per item close to zero.