The Long Tail

UK Book Tour schedule

I'm starting the book tour in London on Monday, the week before publication. I leave tomorrow morning and then the madness begins. It's been pretty much a different city each day for the past two weeks, but now it's the same amount of travel and twice the number of events. The time to pretty up my Powerpoint (and iron my only good suit) is now.

Here's my London schedule. Unfortunately, there are only a few public events (they're the ones with links) but I'd love to see anyone who can make it at the Geek Dinner on Fri.

Monday, July 3

--700-900 : Live interview with the TODAY  programme – Radio 4

--1000-1700:  Press interviews

--1830: Interview for Chris Evans show on Radio 2

--1900: Speech at the ICA 
            Event hosted by James Naughton (Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open) from the Observer.

Tuesday 4^th

--1030-1100: Press photo session

--1100-1600: Press interviews

--1700-2000: IPPR speech

    Event hosted by the Minister of Creative Industries, Shaun Woodward, and sponsored by Reuters.

 Godfrey Mitchell theatre
    One Great George Street
    Westminster, London

Wednesday 5^th

--1000-1030: At Google UK

--1200:  In-house talk with BBC executives, staff

--1430-1600 Filming for Imagine   TV

--1700: Drinks at  Random House

Thursday 6^th

--1000-1400: Press interviews

--1630: Speaking to Reuters executives.

--1930: New media dinner hosted by Azeem Azhar

Friday 7^th

--9:00-11:00: Speech at Amazon.co.uk

--1300:  Lunch with the FT

--1500: At The Economist

--1800-2300:  Geek Dinner

T minus 15 and FREE BOOKS!

Just 15 days till the July 11th launch, and it's all starting to feel very real. I'm not prone to excitement, but...okay, just this once.

This morning I gave a speech in New Orleans at the American Library Association annual conference, which was a delight, not just because it's a fascinating exercise to apply the Long Tail to libraries (the book part of my presentation, minus design frills, is here) but also because it was such a receptive audience. Standing-room-only crowd, great questions, sold-out book table.

(As an aside, seeing New Orleans in person was sobering. I had foolishly thought that it was well on its way to reconstruction. Not even close. Burned out stores, ripped-off roofs and empty, shattered neighborhoods are everywhere.)

Now I've just arrived in Ann Arbor to speak at Borders tomorrow. Then back to San Francisco for meetings on Wed, to Seattle on Thus to speak at Amazon, and then to San Diego on Friday to pick up my nine-year-old from AstroCamp. Then on Saturday I'm off to London for the first leg of the book tour proper (I'll post the full London schedule in a day or two).

But I've saved the best news for last. My publisher has given me 100 copies to GIVE AWAY. Here's the deal: I'll give them to the first 100 bloggers who would like to review it. Just email me at canderson@wiredmag.com with your blog URL, snail mail address, and the subject line "Review Copy". They'll be sent out by the end of the week.

UPDATE (two hours later): twenty have gone, eighty still available. Yes, I will happily send them to international addresses. There are no guidelines on your review, which can be as long or short as you want. Just email me the URL when you post.

UPDATE2 (eight hours later): As of 6/27: 9:30am EST ninety-five have gone, and there are just five left. Note this is only for bloggers--you must include your blog URL. If you got in under the wire we'll send you email confirmation today, and you should get the book next week.

UPDATE3: 10:30 EST. Okay, lesson one: don't post the original offer at 11:00PM EST if you're hoping for an equal balance between US and non-US bloggers. Because I put people in the US at a time-zone disadvantage, I'm going to slightly change the rules. The first 50 non-US bloggers will get one (those are now all taken), as will the first 50 US bloggers. That means that I've got ten more for US bloggers. Move fast!

UPDATE4: Well, that was fast. We've hit our number, and I'm out. Many thanks to all who emailed; you'll get confirmation in the next 24 hours. At this point the remaining review copies are reserved for the press (if you are press, email me with a subject line of "Press Review Copy" and I'll forward it to the right department at my publisher).

More beer!

I'm sorry to go on about this, er, frothy subject, but the Brookston Beer Bulletin has posted perhaps the most thoughtful analysis of the Long Tail applied outside of entertainment I've read all year. The parallels between "craft beer" and niche products in other industries are fascinating. Here's an excerpt, discussing the rise of "hit" beer in the 20th Century, driven by forces that are now losing some of their power:

Historically, all breweries were essentially local or regional at most. There were no national breweries until after the invention of refrigeration. Beer did not travel well enough before that time and so breweries were limited in the territory in which they could sell their beers. Several factors changed in a short space of time, making national breweries feasible for the first time after World War 2. Keeping beer cold, of course, came before that time but a national media and especially television that made reaching the entire nation possible was also very important. It’s no coincidence that tomorrow is the 55th anniversary of Pabst becoming the first brewer to advertise in color when CBS broadcast a special one-hour inaugural show (June 25, 1951). It was there very ability to do so that allowed Pabst to become nationally recognized.

Then there was post-war prosperity and the national highway system, which made shipping to anywhere in the U.S. more economical. These caused products of all stripes from soup to nuts to create national identities. In order to appeal to this much wider consumer base, they were generally re-tooled to appeal to the lowest-common denominator. For beer, this actually began during the war, when the military requested beer for the troops that was watered down so as to avoid soldiers too inebriated to fight. Many returned with a taste for the bland.

So the bland American-style lagers developed over time to appeal to almost everyone or at least offend no one. Add to that immense advertising and marketing budgets with television and sports sponsorships and you can create national brands. Fortunes were won and lost as the breweries battled one another for dominance on a national scale. Brewing history is littered with the losers of this period. Hundreds of once prominent and popular regional breweries are gone. Our brewing heritage itself all but stamped out in the name of commerce. Prior to the late 1970s, the American beer scene was on the brink of extinction. Our most popular beers made us the laughingstock of the world. There were a few pockets of resistance here and there, but by and large the war was almost over. But then a backlash began that became the microbrewery revolution, which in twenty-five or so years has created a beer culture that is the envy of the world. More different styles of beer are now brewed in America than any other place in the world. Almost all innovation in brewing is happening at the craft beer level. American beers consistently win a higher proportion of awards in international competitions. By any measure, this is a phenomenal achievement. It’s too bad 96.5% of Americans are scarcely aware of it.

The only companies that can afford a seat at the national advertising table are the mainstream breweries. Therefore their voices are the only ones that can be heard. This unrelentless barrage of marketing has created a market so propped up that it would likely collapse if they suddenly stopped. This perpetual marketing machine can be compared to running on a treadmill. As long as you’re moving your legs you’ll stay in the same place but stop and you’ll be thrown off.

Go read the whole thing (which discusses both why craft beer may be ascendant and Anheuser Busch's plans) here.

The Long Tail of Beer

Dominic Basulto from the Business Innovation Insider made my day with this post. The Long Tail of Beer? Microbrews, of course, but that's just the start. Quote:

Beer giant Anheuser-Busch recently created a new division called Long Tail Libations. The goal? To find more "niche" alcohol products to supplement the company's "hits". I stumbled across Long Tail Libations in the Wall Street Journal (link; reg req'), which explained Anheuser-Busch's foray into new markets:

"Anheuser-Busch, battling industry market-share losses to purveyors of wine and liquor, is hinting that it will make an effort to enter the liquor industry... Anheuser has made some tentative moves into the liquor business. Last year, it formed a separate division, Long Tail Libations, to develop, test and market distilled spirits. Its first product, Jekyll & Hyde, a liqueur, is being test marketed in a handful of places. Over the past few years, the St. Louis-based brewer also has joined forces with Bacardi to produce flavored malt beverages, so-called malternatives, under the Bacardi Silver label."

As the president of Anheuser-Busch's U.S. beer operations pointed out, "We will have to re-evaluate our business model going forward in terms of expanding beyond beer and broadening our position within the total alcohol industry." Does that sound like a Long Tail strategy or what? As the Liquor Snob points out, the new Jekyll & Hyde drink is about the furthest thing from good ol' Budweiser beer:

"The company is currently dipping its toe in the hard liquor pond, testing out a new liquor it's developed called Jekyll and Hyde, which comes as two liquors designed to be mixed together. The product comprises of two liqueur bottles. Jekyll is a scarlet red, sweet spirit tasting of wild berries, while Hyde is an herbal tasting, black spirit that floats on top when poured over the red-colored Jekyll. The two products are meant to be served together, although consumers can drink them separately as well, the company said.

We're not quite sure about the idea of mixing wild berries and an "herbal" taste, but we're not in the early-20s demographic this stuff is aimed at, either. Jekyll and Hyde will be made by Long Tail Libations, a subsidiary of the beer giant, and if it is a success Busch will probably continue pursuing its hard liquor dreams. No announcement has been made yet about a national release of Jekyll and Hyde, and the jury's still out on whether it will give you split personalities, one good and one evil."

Meanwhile, Casey Kasem is resting comfortably in retirement...

"The BBC's flagship pop music programme Top of the Pops has been cancelled after 42 years, the BBC has announced." Link thanks to PSFK.

Latest Rhapsody data and more

Has it actually been two and half years since I started researching the Long Tail?! The first complete data set I got was from Rhapsody in March 2004, which I used in the original article here. I then got updated data in March 2005 and again in December 2005, the last of which I used in the book. Now I've just done the first pass at analyzing the March 2006 data, which I presented at an ADA meeting in Philadelphia last week.

Here's the slide from that presentation. The Long Tail of music, as defined as downloads of music not carried by the average Wal-Mart (using a relatively generous figure for Wal-Mart's typical inventory), has grown from 26% of Rhapsody's business to 30% over those three years, as Rhapsody's inventory has grown from 500,000 tracks to 1.3 million.

Talking to executives at the meeting, I also got some good data on how the various music markets compare in their degree of hit-centricness. Here's that slide ("P2P" refers to the major file-sharing services, as measured by BigChampagne):

Nearly half of Wal-Mart's music business is selling the top 100 artists. On Rhapsody, it's less than a quarter. This is a great example of the Long Tail at work.

Open Peer Review

The scientific journal Nature is conducting a fascinating experiment in "open peer review", which it describes this way:

In Nature's peer review trial, lasting for three months, authors can choose to have their submissions posted on a preprint server for open comments, in parallel with the conventional peer review process. Anyone in the field may then post comments, provided they are prepared to identify themselves. Once the usual confidential peer review process is complete, the public 'open peer review' process will be closed. Nature will report on the results after the trial period is over.

In parallel, it's conducting a online debate about the future of scientific peer review in the web age, and has asked various scientists and writers to contribute their thoughts. Mine was on how the online definition of "peer" (basically anyone, as in "peer-production" and "peer-to-peer") can help us rethink the academic definition of "peer" (usually a tenured PhD professor) for the purpose of identifying the most important scientific work. Here's an excerpt:

The free online Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals are planning to extend the open peer review model by adopting conventions from the blogosphere: an open comment area for each paper, 'trackbacks' that show which sites are linking to it, and perhaps a reader ratings scheme. Michael Eisen, a genomics researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and one of PloS's founders, says the hope is to capture some of the post-publication wisdom already found in academia, but rarely accessible to others.

PLoS still uses expert researchers to review papers before publication, but the editors realize that these scientists often have little time to really dig into a paper. By contrast, readers of a paper after publication may also have an opinion, and many (especially graduate students) have the time to evaluate the paper in depth. The online environment means there’s no reason not to record it.

Such a record would have the effect not only of continuing peer review after publication, but also of making it easier to find important work in a blizzard of papers – they’re the ones that are being buzzed about. It is also easier to ignore poor work that slipped through peer review – these are the papers with the withering comments and poor ratings.

Best of all, such an open peer-review process taps into something that already exists: journal clubs. Every day, thousands of researchers and students are discussing the latest papers, but their insights and opinions are not recorded and shared widely. This information needs only to be collected, organized and distributed to become far more useful. It's now possible to tap such collective intelligence online by doing to scientific publishing what the web has already done to mainstream media: democratizing it.

You can read the whole thing here and comment on it here.

Scaling up is good. Scaling *down* is even better.

The world rightly marvels at Google's ability to scale its service up to handle billions of searches a month on megascale server farms of tens of thousands of densely-packed machines. But an equally impressive feat is an entirely different kind of scaling: its ability to build a business that works as well for its smallest customers as it does for its largest.

In traditional business, small customers are all too often a barely-tolerated distraction on the road to getting big customers. They can cost as much to serve as their richer counterparts but generate less revenue. But digital businesses can be efficient enough to serve people who generate no revenue at all. Even if only a tiny fraction of them convert into paying customers, a small percentage of a very large number can still be a big number.

I call this "scaling down", and it's a core Long Tail competency. Traditional businesses target the top end of the market--the biggest hits and the richest customers--for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks: because they think that's where the money is. If you have only so many salespeople and only so many marketing dollars, such a discriminating approach makes sense. But the lesson of the Long Tail is that, as Nobel physicist Richard Feynman predicted, "there's a lot of room at the bottom."

Just as a Long Tail of product offerings emerges when the costs of distribution fall radically, making it economic to offer practically everything, so does a Long Tail of customers. C. K Prahalad calls one of these markets, the global poor, the "Bottom of the Pyramid" and marvels at its size and untapped potential (I discuss that here). But there are countless others.

Google, for instance, realized that there was more to online advertising than simply stealing share of existing advertisers from other media. There were also millions of potential advertisers out there too small to show up on the radar of any ad salesperson; indeed many of them may not have thought of themselves as potential advertisers at all until the lure of five cents per click lowered the barrier to entry far enough to attract them.

There were also million of potential ad-driven publishers (aka: blogs) too small to have an ad salesforce, but perfectly able to copy a few lines of Adsense HTML to their sites and wait for the Google check. And thus emerged a market that now accounts for nearly half of Google's revenues--a market that didn't exist before because it was considered too insignificant to bother with.

Many of the biggest success stories in the current online era have built their business on markets that were previously dismissed as uneconomic. Teenage ramblings. Personal videos. Used Pez dispensers. Ride-sharing requests.

Here are some classic scaling down tactics:

• Self-service: give customers all the tools they need to manage their own accounts. It's cheap, convenient, and they'll thank you for it. Control is power, and the person who wants the work done is the one most motivated in seeing that it's done properly.
• "Freemium" services. As VC Fred Wilson puts it, "give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base." Free scales down very nicely indeed.
• No-frills products: Some may come for the low cost, others for the simplicity. But increasingly consumers are sophisticated enough to know that they don't need, or want to pay for premium brands and unnecessary features. It's classic market segmentation, with most of the growth coming at the bottom.
• Crowdsourcing. From Amazon reviews to eBay listings, letting the customers do the work of building the service is the best way to expand a company far beyond what employees could do on their own.

(image taken from this book, which isn't related but has a nice cover)

What's in Chris' gadget bag?

If anyone's curious, here's what's in my gadget bag: the technologies I own and use every day. These aren't necessarily endorsements, but it may be interesting for people to see what the editor of Wired, who is exposed to an awful lot of gadgetry, actually chose to buy.

Core tech:

• Computer: Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (Core Duo, EvDO)
• Second computer (travel and bedside): Lenovo X41 Tablet PC
• Handheld gameplayer: Nintendo DS (mostly used by the kids, aside from a little Brain Age for me)
• Phone: Treo 700p
• MP3 player: Creative Zen Micro 6GB
• Digital voice recorder (for interviews): Olympus DM-10

Home entertainment tech:

• DVR/media server: Dell Media Center PC
• Videogame console/media extender: Xbox 360s (two)
• Video display: Panasonic AE900 projector
• Main surround sound: Onkyo HT-S777
• Remote speakers: Polk Audio Monitor 40s
• Music streamer for rest of house: Roku SoundBridge M1000
• Universal remotes: Harmony 680s

Photo:

• SLR camera: Canon Digital Rebel XT
• Pocket camera: Canon Digital Elph SD630
• Camcorder: JVC DVM-90 (not recommended; I'll go tapeless next time)

Networking:

• Linksys routers, cable modem, wifi access points and hubs (a mix of gigabit and 100baseT)
• Network backup storage: Buffalo Gigabit Linkstation (400GB)
• Network printer: HP psc 2200 multifunction printer (no longer available)

Services:   

• Music: Rhapsody
• Phone: Sprint
• ISP: Comcast broadband, Earthlink email server
• Blog: Typepad
• Feed reader: Bloglines
• Web hosting: Hostway
• DVD: Netflix

Core application software (aside from standard Office Pro)

• Browser: Firefox and Firefox 2 beta (Bon Echo)
• Charts: Adobe Illustrator CS
• Other graphics: Corel Draw Essentials
• Photo touchup: Photoshop Elements 4.0
• Photo library: Picassa
• Outliner/notes: ActionOutline

As an aside, most of the data analysis for the Long Tail was done with database queries in Access, outputting to Excel.  The charts in the book were done in Illustrator.

T-33 and counting...

Things are starting to pick up at Long Tail HQ in anticipation of the July 11th publication date.

First, the book tour: Although I've been giving talks more or less constantly for the past few months, the official tour kicks off in London on the week of July 3rd. Then it's New York on the 10th and 11th, then San Francisco and other Silicon Valley destinations (including at all the big Long Tail firms, from Google, Yahoo! and eBay to Real and Netflix) from the 12th to the 25th. Then to Seattle for Amazon, Microsoft, Real (north) and Starbucks, among others.

Most of my speaking these days is at companies, and they tend to be for employees only. But there's usually a public event each week, too. Here are some upcoming, pre-tour, ones:

• June 11, Las Vegas: eBay Developers Conference
• June 16, Philadelphia: Alternative Distribution Alliance music festival
• June 26th, New Orleans: American Library Association annual meeting

I'll update this with tour dates later this month.

And while I'm at it, here's some press from the past week:

• A great two-page article on the "Long Tail's Tribe" in Time.
• A quite good piece in the New York Times on Netflix's Long Tail, which somehow manages to avoid using the term.
• Mediapost discovers the phenomena, a bit too late for a book proposal.