[Transplanted from the Ning]
Many misconceptions surround the implication of the long tail phenomenon on media. A recent article in the mainstream press erroneously pointed out that the long tail should mean that there are fewer blockbuster hits and since there are not, then the long tail idea is bankrupt.
What the long tail really means is that a few people will get most of the attention and a lot of people will get a little attention. Somewhere in the middle a few people will get some attention. It’s s classic power curve that’s most familiar to people as “Pareto Analysis” where 80% of the whatever comes from 20% of the participants. In terms of media, it does not mean that big chunks of people will suddenly stop following very small markets. Publishers have long known the value of back catalogs, but have always had to balance the value of keeping a back catalog going when the costs of warehousing and distribution ate up any potential profit.
With the advent of digital storage and distribution, the cost of warehousing and distribution becomes almost nil. Not zero as some would have you believe, but the cost of storing a 100k word title in digital format is very small — probably less than a dime a year and dropping as storage gets cheaper.
The significant issue becomes one of finding an audience and the nature of the long tail almost guarantees that there is an audience for just about anything. It might be 12 people globally, but the internet makes that audience available. This is significant to the self-publishing community because regardless of how good your book is, some people will hate it and some people will like it. The idea would be to identify enough people who like it that you can produce it for them in some format.
Ebooks are the least expensive mode of production and distribution. With some simple desktop tricks, you can turn your text file into an e-book for zero hard cost investment. If you know how to do some basic text formatting and web coding, you can put your book on Amazon as a Kindle version, or on Smashwords in a large variety of ebook formats.They get most of the revenue, but there’s a return on every sale.
Things get more expensive both in cash and in time when you start moving into media like audio. Some minor investments in equipment are normal and learning how to produce audio is a time consuming and often thankless process. It’s possible to produce a viable audio book with things you’d commonly find around most homes in the US today, but with some small investments of cash and some elbow grease, you can produce an exemplary work.
From the standpoint of self-publishing, paper production is the most expensive. First, there’s a physical instantiation of the work so there are material and labor costs involved. Second, there are legal niceties that are commonly observed. These include details like ISBNs and SANs. Sure you can do without them, but you close doors and lock them when your work lacks ISBN. Catalogs close to people without SAN. While the cost of digital production is so low, one can legitimately consider giving the work away, when you start working with paper, this becomes a lot less feasible.
This argument is based on a very strong Do-It-Yourself ethic. As soon as you start paying people to do things for you — hiring editors, voice talent, graphic artists, etc — then the development costs that need to be amortized across the units produced rises to the point where economic feasibility becomes an important consideration.
This is where the long tail comes in. By definition, most of us will never make it to the tall head of the long tail. That’s reserved for the very small number of producers. Only a few people will make it to the NBA. A tiny portion of actors will make it to Broadway and a smaller number still will succeed there. The Stephen Kings and JK Rowlings are one in a million or more. That’s not to say that some of us won’t succeed beyond our wildest dreams, but the reality is that pretty much all of us can stake out a piece of the long tail and find a market for our works. We won’t get rich. We probably will never make a living writing, but we can produce works of artistic merit that other people will be able to find, enjoy, and even pay — for making our efforts economically feasible even if they do not provide economic security by themselves.
Key to this is developing an audience. The internet makes it easy to connect to the audience, but the noise level makes it difficult for your audience to find you. Back in the olden days — like 2007, 2008 — there was a lot less competition. Now you need to find ways to let your audience know you’re there. Key to this is putting work where they can find it, enjoy it, and come to look for more.
Your mileage may vary, but my path was through the medium of “podcast novel.” I was able to write and publish my own work in serialized audio format. I was able to write for me — stories I wanted to tell and in ways I wanted to tell them — and make those stories available to people. Not everybody likes my work. Many find it boring, juvenile, or even saccharin. Most people don’t even know about my work at all. In spite of that I have my own little audience around the globe. Something over 5000 people regularly enjoy my work and await each new release. They write me a lot. I get email from fans at least every day. Sometimes several a day, and I get a lot of requests for hardcopy so that they can share the work with non-technical people who don’t have mp3 players or who don’t listen to on demand audio.
I’m hoping that we can band together here in New Media Publishing to explore some of these ideas of audience development and talk about how to use media that don’t involve paper and ink to publish our works.
