Christopher Anderson

A hot book this year has been The Long Tail by Christopher Anderson. He initially wrote about the concept in an article of the same name in Wired magazine about three years ago. Basically, he uses a concept of the statistical dispersion of observations to describe a world where “big hits,” like best selling books or the blockbuster movies comprise the bulk of company sales. This large amount of sales is the head of the curve. Anderson’s thesis, illustrated by examples ranging from the creation of the Sears catalog and its impact on early 20th Century rural consumers to today’s examples of amazon.com and