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Re: Good-bye, Long Tail

The point of Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory (which is excellent, despite serious shortcomings in his book) is that businesses can make money aggregating a large number of small agents. Thus Amazon can make money selling many, many books, even if each individual title sells very few copies. The winner in this scenario is Amazon, the aggregator. The individual titles on the Long Tail may benefit as well.

So who loses? The middle. When you look at the distribution of units, the Short Head grows even as the Long Tail lengthens. The middle gets knocked down. See Clay Shirky on Weblogs and power laws (http://shirky.com).

In the world of explosive growth of literatures of all kinds, more and more items on the Long Tail will be discovered. This is wonderful. But the brands (like Amazon) that orchestrate the marketplace (Elsevier and Springer are examples, as Harvard will be with its new repository) benefit disproportionately, and they in turn create the equivalent of bestsellers: titles on the growing short head.

Open Access does not threaten the obscure article, which can only benefit, but it lends new energy to the prominent brands, which become even stronger, as they serve as a means to navigate through the growing amount of information. Elsevier wins, as does Harvard; but Illinois? Wisconsin? Or all those medium-sized publishers in the middle?

I wish to make the point that I am not suggesting that OA is a bad thing or undesirable or somehow going to destroy civilization as we know it (as some traditional publishers are claiming). I am saying simply that it has unintended consequences. I think OA, as part of a pluralistic array of services, can be a very, very good thing for the academic community, but most OA initiatives to date are not well thought out and will not achieve their desired ends. OA has to come to terms with what is happening at Borders as well as the Long Tail results of a Google search.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Funk" <mefunk@med.cornell.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 6:14 PM
Subject: Re: Good-bye, Long Tail

I fail to see how the decision by Borders to use more face-out displays is a goodbye to the Long Tail. From the Wikipedia entry for Long Tail:

"The phrase The Long Tail (as a proper noun with capitalized letters) was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article to describe the niche strategy of certain business such as Amazon.com or Netflix. The distribution and inventory costs of those business allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The group of persons that buy the hard-to-find or "non-hit" items is the customer demographic called the Long Tail."

Almost by definition, brick and mortar stores are not in the Long Tail business. It is online stores like Amazon and Netflix that exemplify Long Tail. Most people I know don't browse Amazon--they want a book, search for it, and buy it. The new tactic by Borders is designed to attract the browser, which is most of their business. The WSJ article even states that Borders "plans to launch its own Web site by May 3, giving the retailer the ability to offer online orders to shoppers who can't find what they want in a store." In other words, they're going after the Long Tail online.

And while I pondered over Joe's last paragraph, thinking for several hours that it was a non sequitur, I think it means that he feels scientists are "attracted" to beautifully displayed articles in attractive Elsevier and Springer journals. The "plain looking" articles in homely open access journals just don't get their attention. Therefore Elsevier and Springer will get more money. Or something like that... If only scientists searched for articles on specific subjects instead of just browsed for attractive articles, then open access might work.

For more on Chris Anderson, see his recent article in Wired called "Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business." http://www.wired.com/ techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free

This is guaranteed to blow some minds on this list. He has a book on the subject coming out next year.

Mark Funk
Head, Resource Management - Collections
Weill Cornell Medical Library
New York, NY 10065-4805
mefunk@med.cornell.edu

On Mar 14, 2008, at 12:01 AM, Electronic Content Licensing
Discussion wrote:

From: "Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>
Date: March 13, 2008 6:58:51 PM EDT
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Subject: Good-bye, Long Tail

Interesting (and long-awaited) article in the Wall St. Journal
on Borders' decision to reduce the number of titles it stocks
in favor of giving fewer titles more prominent display.  WSJ is
a subscription site.  The article is dated March 12 and is
titled "Borders Tries About-face on Shclves."  The byline is
Jeffrey Trachtenberg.


From the article:

"In a radical move aimed at jump-starting sales, the nation's
second-largest book retailer is sharply increasing the number
of titles it displays on shelves with the covers face-out.
Because that takes up more room than the traditional spine-out
style, the new approach will require a typical Borders
superstore to shrink its number of titles by 5% to 10%."

The article goes on to note that tests show that when inventory
is reduced and fewer titles are supported (but more
aggressively), sales rise by 9%. Commentators contacted by the
reporter note that people "don't want choice" and that Borders'
decision will favor larger publishers.

This is the attention economy at work.  What a windfall open
access is for Elsevier and Springer.

Joe Esposito