The Long Tail: Book Sales of Hits vs. Low-Volume Titles
From a Wired article on internet sales and how titles that are not hits are
still profitable,
"http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html?pg=3&topic=tail&topic_set=">
“The Long Tail”:
…The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of
Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the
implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that
are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those
that are…
Demand is being diverted from the most popular titles to this “long tail”. Is that good? The economist’s answer is “yes”. If people are given to fads, it is even better. The only cause for discomfort is that if it is the “maximum” of creative output that is the most valuable for a society, our maxima, in terms of popular appeal, are going to be less rewarded.
December 14th, 2004 at 11:11 pm
I wonder if the same trend applies to music buying. If so, that would give all of us struggling musicians a better shot at tapping into some of the money sucked up by the superstars.
And as far as creativity goes, I don’t think anyone would argue that the best-selling musical acts are the most creative.