Chris Anderson (writer)



Chris Anderson (born July 9, 1961) is editor-in-chief of Wired, which has won a National Magazine Award for general excellence three times during his tenure.

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006)
Page numbers refer to the 2006 Hyperion edition, ISBN 1401302378.


 * Our growing affluence has allowed us to shift from being bargain shoppers buying branded (or even unbranded) commodities to becoming mini-connoisseurs, flexing our taste with a thousand little indulgences that sets us apart from others.
 * Introduction to the 2006 edition, p. 11


 * For the first time in history, hits and niches are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.
 * Ch. 1, p. 24


 * The world of shelf space is a zero-sum game: One product displaces another.
 * Ch. 2, p. 40


 * We are turning from a mass market back into a niche nation, defined now not by our geography but by our interests.
 * Ch. 2, p. 40


 * In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distributions, narrowly targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.
 * Ch. 4, p. 52


 * A Long Tail is just culture unfiltered by economic scarcity.
 * Ch. 4, p. 53


 * Talent is not universal but it is widely spread: Give enough people the capacity to create, and inevitably gems will emerge.
 * Ch. 4, p. 54


 * Never underestimate the power of a million amateurs with keys to the factory.
 * Ch. 5, p. 58


 * The Web is the ultimate marketplace of ideas, governed by the laws of big numbers.
 * Ch. 5, p. 70


 * The ultimate cost reduction is eliminating atoms entirely and dealing only in bits.
 * Ch. 6, p. 96


 * For a generation of customers used to doing their buying research via search engine, a company’s brand is not what the company says it is, but what Google says it is.
 * Ch. 7, p. 99


 * In a world of infinite choice, context—not content—is king. (Chris Anderson quoting Rob Reid)
 * Ch. 7, p. 109


 * Broadly, the Long Tail is about abundance. Abundant shelf space, abundant distribution, abundant choice.
 * Ch. 8, p. 143


 * Remember, in the tyranny of physical space, an audience too thinly spread is the same as no audience at all.
 * Ch. 9, p. 163


 * Blockbusters are the exception, not the rule, and yet we see an entire industry through their rarefied air.
 * Ch. 9, p. 167


 * We are entering an era of unprecedented choice. And that’s a good thing.
 * Ch. 10, p. 168


 * Order it wrong and choice is oppressive; order it right and it’s liberating.
 * Ch. 10, p. 174


 * This is the end of spoon-fed orthodoxy and infallible institutions, and the rise of messy mosaics of information that require—and reward—investigation.
 * Ch. 11, p. 190


 * Fundamentally, a society that asks questions and has the power to answer them is a healthier society than one that simply accepts what it’s told from a narrow range of experts and institutions.
 * Ch. 11, p. 191