What happens when the bottlenecks that stand between supply and demand in our culture go away and everything becomes available to everyone? "The Long Tail" is a powerful new force in our economy: the rise of the niche. As the cost of reaching consumers drops dramatically, our markets are shifting from a one-size-fits-all model of mass appeal to one of unlimited variety for unique tastes. From supermarket shelves to advertising agencies, the ability to offer vast choice is changing everything, and causing us to rethink where our markets lie and how to get to them. Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it, from DVDs at Netflix to songs on iTunes to advertising on Google. However, this is not just a virtue of online marketplaces; it is an example of an entirely new economic model for business, one that is just beginning to show its power. After a century of obsessing over the few products at the head of the demand curve, the new economics of distribution allow us to turn our focus to the many more products in the tail, which collectively can create a new market as big as the one we already know. The Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance. New efficiencies in distribution, manufacturing, and marketing are essentially resetting the definition of what's commercially viable across the board. If the 20th century was about hits, the 21st will be equally about niches.

What happens when the bottlenecks that stand between supply and demand in our culture go away and everything becomes available to everyone? "The Long Tail" is a powerful new force in our economy: the rise of the niche. As the cost of reaching consumers drops dramatically, our markets are shifting from a one-size-fits-all model of mass appeal to one of unlimited variety for unique tastes. From supermarket shelves to advertising agencies, the ability to offer vast choice is changing everything, and causing us to rethink where our markets lie and how to get to them. Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it, from DVDs at Netflix to songs on iTunes to advertising on Google. However, this is not just a virtue of online marketplaces; it is an example of an entirely new economic model for business, one that is just beginning to show its power. After a century of obsessing over the few products at the head of the demand curve, the new economics of distribution allow us to turn our focus to the many more products in the tail, which collectively can create a new market as big as the one we already know. The Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance. New efficiencies in distribution, manufacturing, and marketing are essentially resetting the definition of what's commercially viable across the board. If the 20th century was about hits, the 21st will be equally about niches.

* Our summary is short, simple and pragmatic. It allows you to have the essential ideas of a big book in less than 30 minutes. By reading this summary, you will learn about the Long Tail economy and the opportunity it represents for business strategies today. You will also learn : how the Long Tail market has progressively imposed itself in front of the best-seller market; how this economic vision is redefining the way traditional sectors make profit; what is the current role of the Long Tail in valuing niche markets and promoting their diversity. With the Long Tail, Chris Anderson takes up a statistical concept. Contrary to the so-called “best-sellers”, the tail represents the end of the sales curve, in other words, low sales. Long favoured by companies for a long time, the hits of head are still perceived as more remunerative than the products of tail, which are assimilated to window articles or missed best-sellers. However, the Tail is getting longer with the digital age, counting more and more products, representing more and more purchases, niches and micro-revenues which, once aggregated, produce a decisive capital. A product with modest sales rates can simply no longer be considered unsold. For ten years now, the Long Tail has been shaking up sales practices, the structure of the offer and the relationship with the consumer. Thanks to online commerce, it responds to every request, however punctual and anecdotal it may be. No item and no potential customer is now excluded from this large-scale economy. *Buy now the summary of this book for the modest price of a cup of coffee!

The online economy offers challenges to traditional businesses as well as incredible opportunities. Chris Anderson makes the compelling case that in many instances businesses can succeed best by giving away more than they charge for. Known as "Freemium," this combination of free and paid is emerging as one of the most powerful digital business models. In Free, Chris Anderson explores this radical idea for the new global economy and demonstrates how it can be harnessed for the benefit of consumers and businesses alike. In the twenty-first century, Free is more than just a promotional gimmick: It's a business strategy that is essential to a company's successful future.

ABOUT THE BOOK Sporting the provocative subtitle: “Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More,” The Long Tail is a watershed moment in how we think about business in the Internet Age. Twentieth Century businesses founded on the idea of “hits” emphasized the top ten, twenty, fifty -- pick a number -- of almost anything that could be sold. Movie box office, music, or new cars were judged by sales rankings, and those rankings were equated with quality, desirability, and value. Author Chris Anderson, in many ways a true man of the 21st Century, has a different theory. He posits that in an age of vast digital storage capacities, Internet staples like Amazon, iTunes, Ebay and others have forever altered how customers consider what to buy. In 2004, as Editor-In-Chief of Wired magazine, he first wrote an article entitled “The Long Tail,” which asserted that “endless choice” creates “unlimited demand.” Translation: if you have everything in stock, you can keep selling it. In this new reality, instead of a business model driven solely by hits, Anderson held that the new digital model would depend as much or more upon “niche” buying, because product that took up no physical space could be kept available for sale virtually forever. MEET THE AUTHOR Tom Szollosi graduated from UCLA in 1972 with a degree in English Literature. After a short stint in advertising, he wrote for television beginning in 1976, and has continued to the present, logging over 100 episodes of both drama and comedy. Tom has also written five motion pictures, four novels, and taught screenwriting at UCLA Extension for six years. Tom loves baseball, writing, books, and politics, though not necessarily in that order. Most recently, he has been exploring the world of e-books. He is married, has two sons, and lives in Los Angeles. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Chris Anderson himself says it best in The Long Tail: “The theory of the Long Tail can be boiled down to this: Our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve, and moving toward a huge number of niches in the tail.” These niches, according to Anderson, are “everything else.” No wonder it’s long. Very little of what’s out there is hot at any particular moment. What is hot, a “hit,” comprises the front, or head, of that demand curve. Everything else is part of the tail. You can sell less of a hit if small quantities of all those other things keep moving, and the research says they do. First, Anderson explains how the Internet has “unified elements of a supply-chain revolution that had been brewing for decades.” At lightening speed, TV and top-40 radio lost much of their taste-shaping clout to the computer and its secret weapon, the Internet. Buy a copy to keep reading!

Find your niche and future-proof your business! This book is a practical and accessible guide to understanding and implementing the long tail theory, providing you with the essential information and saving time. In 50 minutes you will be able to: • Understand the uses of the long tail theory in the digital product market and how you can use it to sell products and for search engine optimization • Identify the products in your portfolio that make up the ‘head’ and ‘tail’ sections of the long tail theory and use these findings to form your strategy • Learn about how you can increase future profitability using Chris Anderson’s strategy of “selling less of more” ABOUT 50MINUTES.COM | Management & Marketing 50MINUTES.COM provides the tools to quickly understand the main theories and concepts that shape the economic world of today. Our publications are easy to use and they will save you time. They provide elements of theory and case studies, making them excellent guides to understand key concepts in just a few minutes. In fact, they are the starting point to take action and push your business to the next level.

Why the future of popular culture will revolve around ever bigger bets on entertainment products, by one of Harvard Business School's most popular professors What's behind the phenomenal success of entertainment businesses such as Warner Bros., Marvel Entertainment, and the NFL—along with such stars as Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, and LeBron James? Which strategies give leaders in film, television, music, publishing, and sports an edge over their rivals? Anita Elberse, Harvard Business School's expert on the entertainment industry, has done pioneering research on the worlds of media and sports for more than a decade. Now, in this groundbreaking book, she explains a powerful truth about the fiercely competitive world of entertainment: building a business around blockbuster products—the movies, television shows, songs, and books that are hugely expensive to produce and market—is the surest path to long-term success. Along the way, she reveals why entertainment executives often spend outrageous amounts of money in search of the next blockbuster, why superstars are paid unimaginable sums, and how digital technologies are transforming the entertainment landscape. Full of inside stories emerging from Elberse's unprecedented access to some of the world's most successful entertainment brands, Blockbusters is destined to become required reading for anyone seeking to understand how the entertainment industry really works—and how to navigate today's high-stakes business world at large.