http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail_pr.html The Long Tail: in an Internet economy, you can make money by selling stuff most people don’t want (e.g. Bollywood films)—because you can find them, or they can find you. True, but is it really the case that “more than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles”? This didn’t sound right; I emailed the author who referred me to a paper which estimates that “47.9% of Amazon’s unit sales fall in titles with ranks above 40,000.” (Seems much more likely; am investigating further.)
(Whilst Amazon may have approximately 5% of total book sales, it almost certainly has a much greater percentage of rare book sales; the tail is likely to be “artificially” lengthened because consumers can’t (easily) buy rare books from physical shops.)
Update: Chris Anderson, the author, says that the Long Tail uses the same technique as the paper linked above, but with 2004 data. He’s also suspicious of the figure, though, and suspects that the actual 50% point falls lower in the rankings. If only Amazon would say! 10:08