The Long Tail/Anderson 1-9

2 In short, although we still obsess over hits, they are not quite the economic force they once were. Where are those fickle consumers going instead? No single place. They are scattered to the winds as markets fragment into countless niches. The one big growth area is the Web, but it is an uncategorizable sea of million destinations, each defying in its own way the conventional logic of media and marketing.

5 The era of one-size-fits-all is ending, and in its place is something new, a market of multitudes. This book is about that market.

Increasingly, the mass market is turning into a mass of niches.

7 So the trick to trend-spotting is to ask them.

8 98% rule. In a world of almost zero packaging cost and instant access to almost all content in this format, consumers exhibit consistent behavior: They look at almost everything. I believe that this requires major changes by the content producers—I’m just not sure what changes!

9 However, when that space doesn’t cost anything, suddenly you can look at those infrequent sellers again, and they begin to have value.

The onesies and twosies were still only selling in small numbers, but there were so, so many of them that in aggregate they added up to a big business.