Metacritic Books

The Long Tail
by Chris Anderson

ISBN: 1401302378
Hyperion, 256 pages, $24.95
Nonfiction Business & Professional, Current Events & Politics
Released 07/11/2006

Expanding on an article he wrote for Wired (where he is the editor-in-chief), Anderson examines the impact of new technologies on popular culture and the business of entertainment.

Overall Metascore

This is an average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

70 / 100

Critic Reviews

Favorable Booklist Mary Whaley
[An] excellent book. [Aug 2006]
Favorable Daily Telegraph Martin Vander Weyer
I strongly recommend this one to anyone who wants to understand how economics is changing.
Favorable Houston Chronicle Fritz Lanham
Challenging, thought-provoking, The Long Tail is one of those business books that, ironically, deserves more than a niche readership.
Favorable Publishers Weekly
Anderson manages to explain a murky trend in clear language, giving entrepreneurs and the rest of us plenty to think about. [22 May 2006]
Favorable Salon Farhad Manjoo
"The Long Tail" feels surprisingly free of new insight; it doesn't say a great deal more than what Anderson offered in his breakthrough Wired article.
Favorable The Economist
One weakness of this otherwise excellent book is that it tries to apply the theory of the long tail to fields far beyond entertainment and e-commerce.
Favorable The New York Times Lorne Manly
Mr. Anderson’s thesis suffers at times from overextending itself... But like “The Tipping Point,” Mr. Anderson’s book does an excellent job of spotting trends and fitting them into an easily accessible theoretical framework that helps explain the changing culture around us.
Favorable The New Yorker John Cassidy
All this is snappily argued and thought-provoking, if not quite as original as Anderson’s publishers would have us believe.
Mixed Wall Street Journal Steven Zeitchik
Mr. Anderson is prone to making arguments that assert the fact of a long tail rather than show its ultimate effects.
Mixed Slate Tim Wu
Anderson's book, unlike his original Wired article, threatens to turn a great theory of inventory economics into a bad theory of life and the universe.

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