Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

Repetitive	Customer Rating:
Sometimes a book may have excellent concept and ideas, but fails on execution. In my opinion, The Long tail is one of them; when the same theory is being presented in a book repeatedly, one gets bored with it regardless how great the theory may be. Would have been an excellent book if the author was a bit more concise with his point and reduce the length by half.

A winning concept	Customer Rating:
Chris Andreson has written a down-to-earth, incisive and savvy page-turner to tell the story of how the almost unlimited choice brought about new internet-driven technologies has changed the rules of the game for business and the online/offline consumer markets. Miss it at your peril.

A mixed bag

Customer Rating:

I finished this book sometime ago, but had to ponder for a while before writing about it. My dilemma revolves around two points. First, it is an interesting, well written, read. Second, the evidence presented is entirely anecdotal. Anderson's thesis is very simple. The rise of businesses like Amazon and eBay, coupled with the interpersonal communication facilities afforded by the Internet, has effectively created unlimited demand. He argues that he has identified a business opportunity to make a profit in niche areas that were not previously profitable. The explanation given is fairly simple. The development of the Internet means that more people have access to minority items, and the development of filtering technology, especially collaborative filtering technology, means that people can identify material they are interested in more easily. The concept is seductive and well argued. Unfortunately, more recent research (the book was published several years ago) is not really supporting the idea. Not only that, but I have been unable to find any examples of successful businesses just based on the long tail model. As the Western world slides into a recession of the next year or so, it will soon become clear whether this is yet another idea from the digeratii which is based on the assumption that the good times will last for ever, or contains some real meat. Five stars for entertainment value. One star for lack of research!

Simple but infectious

Customer Rating:

Overall I really liked The Long Tail, I found it very interesting, well written and easy to read. The only slight criticism I have, which is the reason for the 4 star rating, is that is does feel as though it could have been shortened a little without losing any of the content. The overarching idea of the book is that if you can drive down the costs of producing, distributing and finding content, people will start to move away from "hit-driven" mass-market content and start to find a world filled with niches that fill their desires more completely. It's not a particularly complex idea but it has some interesting potential consequences, as highlighted throughout the book. Whether or not you should completely buy into this, or how far you may see it changing the way people find and consume things such as music and entertainment, is open to debate. What I can say is that since reading the book I have begun to notice elements of the Long Tail in action in many different places.

Uneven	Customer Rating:
Thought-provoking from both a cultural and commercial point of view, but it goes on a bit! Would have been better at half the length.