The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson — Technology has made it cheaper to produce and store and sell many things. So niché products that never would have been viable before are now big business. That’s the premise. If that’s all you want to know, you don’t really need to read this book. At a pinch, read the Wired article it’s based on — you’ll save both time and money.
Though the book has been widely praised, and I did find parts of it very interesting, I also found it just a teensy bit laborious, as it seemed to spend a lot of time covering the same ground over and over. Some books like this will come up with something illuminating and different every few pages, or at least every chapter. This didn’t seem to. It probably should have been about half the length it is. As such it’s probably worth seeking out only if you really want to know about the phenomenon in great detail. Maybe it’s just proof that, deep down, I’m not an economist. Or that I understood the concept too well already.
