Living on the Long Tail

In 2004 a Wired magazine writer named Chris Anderson coined (or maybe just popularized) the phrase “long tail,” meaning the many, many items that don’t sell well individually, but which collectively make up a significant part of a company’s sales. For example (and I’m using completely made up numbers here), Amazon might sell thousands of copies of a new Stephen King book in a day, but only two copies of The Odyssey on that same day. The Stephen King book and the other hundred other megasellers of the moment make up the “head” of Amazon’s sales numbers, while The Odyssey and the hundreds of thousands of books that only sell a handful of copies make up the “long tail” of Amazon sales. And because there are so very many books making up the long tail, they might together make Amazon just as much money as the items in the head do.

I think it would be a fascinating experiment to live for a year on the long tail of as many areas of life as possible.

What are some examples of how you might do this?

• At the supermarket, buy only foods that are high up, low down, far back, or otherwise hard to find. These are the low sellers. See that jar of artichoke pesto with pimentos hiding behind the better selling marinara and alfredo sauces? That pesto is on the long tail.
• On your favorite music streaming service, type in random words and see what it pulls up. Odds are it won’t be the latest Justin Timberlake or Yo Yo Ma album. Gregorian Chant layered on top of Glen Campbell songs? I’d give that a spin.
• Remember that bizarre looking novel you made fun of at Goodwill because it had a tentacled alien wearing a sheriff’s badge on the cover? Put down your Dostoyevsky and pick up the alien — that’s your bedtime reading for the next few days.
• Why drive a Toyota, Honda, or Ford when you could be cruising in a Suzuki, Isuzu, or old Plymouth?
• Cancel that Las Vegas vacation and check out Providence instead.

For this experiment to be bearable, the elements of the long tail must be low sellers because they’re old or out of fashion, not because they’re objectively worse than the items at the head. In some cases there’s probably a solid reason why a food/CD/book/car/city isn’t as popular as the top sellers. But if you can identify items that lack buzz and flash but still have a solid, worthwhile core, you might discover all sorts of wonderful things that otherwise would have passed you by (not to mention likely saving a lot of money).

Anyway, this is an experiment I’d like to try out on myself. I don’t know if the results should be recorded in a blog, magazine article, or nowhere at all. But that’s the kind of experiential journalism I’d enjoy reading about, so unless I can pitch it successfully to A.J. Jacobs, maybe I’ll explore the long tail a little myself.