Long Tail Is Long, But It's Also Very Thin

Shelf Awareness, an e-mail newsletter for bookstores and others in the business, reports this morning on a paper by Anita Elberse from the current issue of the Harvard Business Review. (Elberse also presented her findings at the Book Industry Study Group's annual meeting on Friday.)

Basically, what she found is that there is indeed a "long tail" of low-selling products in a market -- she studied both books and music -- but that most of those long tail products sell too poorly to make any profit, that consumers (and particularly casual consumers) still mostly want the big hits, and that niche products work best if they are cost-free until an actual sale pops up.

Some quotes:

• though "online channels have significantly broadened customer access to niche products, hits still dominate. Even the people most interested in niche products still like hits."
• "resist the temptation to direct customers to the Long Tail because too often they'll like those products less."

Of course, there's the question of how you define the long tail -- Elberse talks about people who buy one book are probably buying James Patterson, and so the second book they buy should be something very similar to Patterson. But not all elements of the rest of the publishing world are a substitute for a big mainstream thriller, and the audience for anything is not an undifferentiated mass. (Some people, even many bookbuyers, won't want Patterson no matter what -- and a sizable chunk of them are the ones who buy only one book from, say, J.K. Rowling in a year. That, of course, is mostly quibbling about elements of the "Big Head" rather than the long tail.)

But the general lesson seems clear: the blockbuster business is not going to go away; that's where the big money is and will stay. In other news, the sky is blue and the grass is green. Watch this space for breaking news about the Pope's religious views and ursine evacuation habits.