More On “The Long Tail”
Constance Ash July 29th, 2006
In the New York Times Sunday Book Review, “Backlist to the Future,” the publishing industry considers the long tail concept.
Kinda boils down to, ”too much trouble and too expensive.” In the meantime — I pull this from the article:
Paradoxically, the online sales technologies on which the long tail depends may actually be undercutting backlist sales by squeezing them between the two poles of the market: new frontlist titles and used books, which are easier to find than ever thanks to the rise of online booksellers and search engines like BookFinder.com. This is a potential problem for most publishers, who rely on backlist sales for a significant part of their business. Titles more than one year old — including best sellers with staying power like “The Da Vinci Code†— account for 62 to 68 percent of annual sales at Barnes & Noble, said Robert Wietrak, the company’s vice president for merchandising. “It’s what the business is built on,†he said.Â