Review of the Long Tail

I've finished The Long Tail now. There are lots of reviews out there summarising it, so I'll say some personal things about it. Unlike the previous book I was sent a review copy of, this one wasn't pre-released via the author's blog. He discussed some of the thinking that went into the book, but didn't show us chapters as he was writing them.

Before I started I wondered what else can you say once you've explained the initial long tail thing. The answer is that he goes into more detail about how niches work, finds long tail examples back in history (mail order catalogues), as well as covering how people find stuff when there's so much choice. The latter was another question I had, which was fairly well answered.

His examples of Long Tail businesses was pretty limited to a few: Amazon, Ebay, Netflix and a couple of others, and to a US perspective. The former is probably because of where he could get stats from, and the fact that it's early days still. The latter is probably because its so much harder to write a world book, but then the internet is in most countries, so I think its worth making the effort.

As for the subject of long tail and charities which I covered in my previous post on the book, I found a few more things to think on, like reducing your costs, and building findable niches.

Disclosure: I got this book for free.

tags: non-profit
charity
long tail