Sliding down the long tail
Interesting post I just stumbled upon (and I mean this literally, I wasn’t using StumpleUpon!) on Chris Anderson’s Long Tail blog. He has posted an email he received from a filmmaker who is finding it very difficult to make a living in long tail land and who argues that it benefits big companies and consumers but that small producers are still struggling to survive:
Your Long Tail theory is a basic and profound truth that I happily embrace AS A CONSUMER. But as a producer and creator of Long Tail content it is basically spelling out my doom. Other than your book examples which are still basically about VERY LARGE entities and aggregators, I am finding very few self supporting examples of independent Long Tail producers.
It feels like niche markets and the tools of Web 2.0 are ideal for small producers but how does everything add up? I would love more stats on this stuff. Anybody know where to find them?