Compassionate conservatism's long tail

Mom-and-pop charities deserve more from the Bush administration | Marvin Olasky

Chris Anderson's The Long Tail (Hyperion, 2006) is one of the bestselling books we note in this week's issue, and its sales are well-deserved. The editor-in-chief of Wired magazine shows how the internet is changing media, business, and much besides by making it possible for people to learn about and order products that don't sell enough to take up space in brick-and-mortar stores and movie theaters, or on television and radio schedules where time is money.

Anderson's point is that many sellers look for the few products that will sell an enormous number of units, but that there's gold to be prospected among the many that will sell few. Over 1 million tracks on iTunes sell at least once. Over 95 percent of Netflix's 55,000 DVDs rent at least once per quarter, and it seems that 98 percent of Amazon.com's top 100,000 sell at least once per quarter.