the long tail

The Long Tail
Chris Anderson of Wired magazine talks about niche media and products on NPR. This comes from his book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Buisiness Is Selling Less of More.
He talks about YouTube — many YouTube videos are as viewed as TV shows — and microbreweries, including Anheuser-Bucsh’s massive microbrewery effort and Amazon’s (very interesting sounding) 140,000th favorite album.
This has direct implications for those of us in small publication. He makes an interesting misjudgement, though: that it’s good enough for artists to get recognition on YouTube, rather than getting paid. What he doesn’t see — and this is weird — is that niche products command boutique prices. I mean, would I prefer to sell 10x as many copies of Shock: to make 1.1x the money? Sure! But until that threatens to happen, I’ll keep my prices the way they are, and that’s pretty good money. It makes it worth the effort. It’s already paid for printing and shipping. Now it’s starting to pay for GenCon. It will start to pay me back as soon as it ships and regular orders start.
Artists, contrary to popular belief, like to get paid and eat food.
The challenge Robert Siegal puts forth, though, is a real one: how to make niche creation pay sustainably?

0 thoughts on “the long tail”

  1. I was listening to that too, really good stuff overall. I think that IPR is becoming that “Yellow Zone” up there.

    The hard part, and disconnect, in our community is that like half of that Yellow Zone (the Long Tail) is Stuff That I’d Be Interested In.

    As a distributor, IPR could sell indie hippie games or indie d20 books, and cover all crowds and get profit. Yay.

    The community of us that follow at least HALF of the movements in that Long Tail are in a bind, struggling to keep abreast of what’s what (and whether it’s worth having) in a widening product base.

    -Andy

  2. Oh, IPR is definitely leading the way. Brennan’s the New Middleman, for sure.

    What a music publisher’s supposed to do is find music that’s worth listening to, culling out the crap, and reviewers balance that check. Then there’s a certain level of trust in the product. But in the indie RPG scene, I think reviews get sort of ignored, with AP favored as a method of discernment — in volume per title, if not actual quality of communicated experience. I don’t know what Brennan could do to leverage that kind of personal-scale review, though. The IPR forum doesn’t hum like RPGnet or The Forge, and a certain critical mass is required for buzz to matter.

  3. Hi, Kid,
    Mom and I were listening to the Chris Anderson piece on NPR, and tried to call to alert you about it. I guess we’re all on the same w/l!
    My reaction about the moolah was the same as yours. Re my own art, I always thought that a small, worldwide niche market of high level collectors would be more than enough to keep things fat and happy for one artist for a lifetime. The challenge is finding and nurturing one’s niche. I get a real kick from watching how much fun – and success – you are having doing that.

  4. Well, it makes a big difference that I can produce a hundred of an edition for a couple hundred dollars and they only weigh a few ounces each. It means I can use the Internet’s strengths to sell my (relativcely ephemeral) art.

    I guarantee it’s easier than selling 500 lbs. of bronze to some dude in Sweden.

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