I noted Seth’s switcheroo as well.

Hugh McCleod has a good cartoon illustrating the picture from teh other point of view: http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/002177.html

Hi Kevin,

Great article! Thank you for writing it up. So great, in fact, that I’ve translated it to Dutch, please see http://aardbron.nl/2008/08/01/kwispel-de-langstaart-der-liefde/.

Succes en plezier,

Martien.

One thing I’d like to see is some numbers associated with these pockets and/or tails. Famously, no one knows what the Amazon ranking (for books, music, etc.) means for your actual sales numbers, though you can do some tests to extrapolate what it might mean. I find it extremely valuable as a world/latin jazz musician to know whether in my niche I should be aiming for 10,000 CDs sold or less than 2,000? How about downloads?

When I was a magazine editor I first helmed a magazine that reached 10,000 Latin American readers, then another that reached 100,000 Americans in the software field. Circulation is often an arbitrary choice based on your competition and making a good story for advertisers. I was surprised to learn that computer book print runs in the early part of this decade were only a couple thousand — a computer book that sold 5,000 copies was a best seller, I believe (it’s probably lower now). The point is, in every niche there’s got to be a sense of the size of the market, and I think that’s what bothers me about these very generic long tail discussions.

I posted this on Anderson’s blog so I figured I would post it here as well.

I’m going to disagree with some of this. If you as a long-tail creator spend an hour on something and then sell it to 100 people at $5, then you are looking at $500 per hour.

That is the real power of the long tail. Creators of any sort (artists, writers, musicians, etc.) don’t need to spend 40 hours per week dedicated to a job. They can create pieces that appeal to niche markets (1 market, 2 markets, 50 markets), and sell to each of those markets.

No matter which tricks I try, I just cannot send pings from blogger. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the comparison between Wired and Mondo 2000 for a very long time. Recently, someone found a Hebrew text I wrote about it a year ago and asked me about it. Following his question I decided to throw 2600 into the discussion as well, and then, seeing Godin’s post I found a new perspective for the discussion, over here http://longtailanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/07/threetails-and-cyber-magazines.html

Another aggregator/creator here. Your comments are spot on, it is tough for the niche creator to make a go of it. However I am noticing that with the huge increase of aggregators that the niche creators are starting to have choices of who and how many channels to distribute through. In my industry the creators are placing their items in dozens of distribution channels for all kinds of different prices and in turn, from what I can tell, they are making a fairly steady income from the tiny amounts that trickle in from many sources. Musicians and bands can now place their music on hundreds of distributions channels through single companies, some of them only asking 15% of the revenue. I think it is a great environment for aggregators but it is also becoming a much better one for the long tail creator as hundreds of aggregators start asking for their content.

Great post. One thing to note is that from the aggregator’s point of view, the real advantage of stocking up the long tail is that it produces some surprise hits which together produce more of a profit than any losses at the end of the tail. Unfortunately, when analyzing the data, researchers look at the tail as being “the less successful set of dvds/books/movies”, and hence miss out these surprise hits which really started out in the tail but have moved out.

I have written a blog post on this topic at my blog

excellent and valuable insight; thanks.

Look at the highly specialized industry newsletters (e.g., major airline aircraft maintenance regulations, food inspection test methodologies). There are thousands of them, and they’ve been successful for years. Each may have only a hundred or so subscribers, and correspondingly stratospheric rates. My guess is there are many more of these specialty niches nowadays being successfully exploited by experts with a much greater reach to their audiences and a much lower cost of publication. That’s what LT means to me: aggregators aren’t needed when an activated audience can find its recondite content creator, and vice versa, without a lot of friction.

Kevin, thanks for your inspiring piece, which reached me courtesy of Chris Andersons blog and Google Reader.

In “The Long Tail” (the book), Anderson underplays the role of the actual “producer” a lot and sees the economical landscape of the long tail almost exclusively from the POV of the aggregator (Amazon.com, eBay, iTunes etc.)

As you say, if niches can be pooled sufficiently well by aggregators, they will also open new doors to their audiences/markets.

BUT, contrary to common belief, pricing can be different in these niche domains, that what has been possible with the current architectures (dominated by the tyranny of PageRank).

When I meet a customer who wants to have one of my documentary films, I can ask almost any price, because this customer is eager to get my product, and can’t get it anywhere else, cheaper. As long as the level of convenience in the architecture is there, products are made known to their markets, and there is an actual need for these particular products, pricing can gain much more appropriate levels to support the producer.

Therefore these niche domains (I’m not talking about Squidoo pages here) which contain rich context and meaningful products which are valued by their market, may do financially well enough to support aggregators as well as producers. What matters is architectures of aggregation and visibility, which connects niche markets more precisely with niche products.

I invite you to take a look at our blog http://www.kaplak.com/blog/ with more on these problems.

Isn’t mass ( or lot less than mass )customization a way for the creator to make a profit on the long tail? Example: there are some clothing designers who make small batches of clothes that are never the same. Also, is it possible in the future that a product can be customized for each individual so that it extends down the long tail? Only a few of each item that is made, but the producer is able to create an endless variety of products based on his/her unique assets and capabilities. Maybe the problem with commercialism is that we think too much about being “commercial” for the masses. What ever happened to the master samurai sword makers? Jimmy Choo does a pretty good job with his shoes.

Fascinating. I am a creator AND an aggregator as you can see from my website (I’ve written 3 of the 20 or so books I sell).

Right now I am teetering on the decision of whether to continue as creator (my books are in tail #2) or aggregator (most of these products are in tail #3).

What I have done to date is use the popularity of my tail #2 creations to send people to purchase my tail #3 aggregated products which I did not create.

Interesting food for thought.

Bryan http://www.lymebook.com