LJ Talks To Chris Anderson

In the Internet Age, the phrase “less is more” has never had more resonance. In his eye-opening book, published this month, The Long Tail, WIRED Magazine editor-in-chief explores the theory that our “culture and economy is shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits,” as in hit records, bestsellers and blockbuster movies, toward “a huge number of niches in the tail.” The theory suggests that in our cultural economy, the niches are where the real action, one day, will be. It’s an idea libraries are already grasping (see Katherine Mossman’s Serving the Niche in the July issue of Library Journal.) LJ recently caught up with Anderson for a quick look at the long tail.

In The Long Tail you write that for too long we've been suffering “the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare.” Of course, pornography seems to be biggest thing on the web. Still, you see the web expanding our horizons culturally?

I think the long tail generally, and the web in particular, are simply revealing the cultural riches that have always been around us, just not visible in the limited retail and media channels that have dominated our society for most of the past century. That said, knowing that other people share your niche taste in whatever you’re into certainly encourages you to delve deeper. And once niches can talk directly to other niches, you have the opportunity for all sorts of interesting cross-fertilization and remixing phenomena.

You spoke at ALA recently. Generally, what has reaction from librarians been like and how do you see the long tail phenomenon affecting the work of libraries?

Librarians totally get it. Unlike many industries, which are resisting the changes forced upon them by the Web, the librarians I've talked to are almost all enthusiastic about redefining their jobs to earn a place in a new world. I see several main advantages for libraries—libraries are a link to local communities, which suggests not just a public space for local events but also being a resource for local books and other info that may not make it to the shelves of the local B&N. Libraries also provide Internet access to those who don't have it, and, increasingly, that means being an access point for government services, too.

You had some pointed criticism of Dewey in the book—how might this be redressed and how might search engines affect how we locate information?

With physical books, it’s hard. But with book listings, I think that Amazon has shown the value in dynamic taxonomies, tag-based "folksonomies" and search-driven discovery. The long tails need two things: massive selection and findability. By filtering an overabundance of choice, good search can find diamonds in the rough, driving demand to niches based on people’s expressed interests.

Google is being sued for scanning books for an index, The RIAA is suing kids for music downloads: whatever the long tail means for us it surely depends on some sense being restored to the intellectual property realm. How do you see this playing out?

The vast majority of the 32 million unique titles in America's libraries are in the gray area between out of print and out of copyright. The vast majority of those, one presumes, would be happily turned over to Google for scanning if only the authors and publishers could be found to ask. But it’s too much trouble to do so, so we are forced into the default position of not making them available online. This is unfortunate. I support Larry Lessig’s proposal to make copyright extension beyond a statutory minimum (say 17 years) a voluntary thing, requiring an active action on the part of the rights-holder. If you want to extend it, you can. But if you don’t, it falls into the public domain, which would make it available to all of us.

You blogged The Long Tail as well. How was that experience for you?

Broadly, I posted half-baked ideas and my smart readers helped me bake them further. I shared data, analysis, theories, and examples and got a load of feedback, between comments, trackbacks and emails. The most interesting part for me was that people found resonances that I had never thought of. Readers who were interested in clothes explained why the “crafting” movement was the “long tail of fashion” and people who were into the drinks industry explained how microbrews were the “long tail of beer” Collectively, they helped me make the book far better than it would have been otherwise.