The Long Tail is both a powerful new economic force in the entertainment industry and perhaps the best lens on a big new trend in the business world overall: the economics of abundance. From supermarket shelves to advertising agencies, the rise of the niche is changing everything, and causing us to rethink where our markets lie and how to get to them. Consider this example: In 1988, a British mountain climber named Joe Simpson wrote a book called Touching the Void, an account of near death in the Peruvian Andes. It was only a modest success and was soon forgotten. A decade later, Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, another book about a mountain-climbing tragedy, which became a publishing sensation. Suddenly Touching the Void started to sell again.
