The Long Tail/Anderson 157-163

160 In a sense, an online retailer is to a brick-and-mortar store what Google is to a library.

163 There may be a local demand for the goods, but again, the question for any store owner is whether there’s enough local demand. The calculation goes a little like this: Sales = The percentage of the population who might buy Minus The percentage not within ten miles of the store Minus The percentage that never comes in Minus The percentage that won’t see the item on the shelf And so on…

Stores leave business on the table simply because their economics doesn’t allow them to pursue it. In a nutshell, that is the business case for online retailers. Because they can reach all of those many low-density towns as efficiently as the high-density ones, they can tap the long tail of distribution demand.