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By David Rothman

suburbsWho says the Long Tail—the idea that booksellers and others can build their businesses around average merchandise, not just best-sellers—is new?

Could the LT have been alive and well before suburbanization killed it?

Jason Epstein has a few thoughts on that matter in his memoir Book Business, and Bill Janssen has summed them up on the eBook Community list.

“…People moved to larger properties in the suburbs, lowering the population density. This had two effects. First of all, it lowered the communications rate, making it harder for books to succeed via “word of mouth.” Secondly, it made locations where people congregated in high densities, and could be sold stuff, much more valuable, making rents in suburban shopping malls much higher than side streets in urban areas. This meant that booksellers couldn’t maintain huge inventories, and thus had to focus on bestsellers and “blockbuster” books.

The good news: Epstein thinks the Net can bring the LT back. Meanwhile he himself is involved with a print-on-demand approach,

Photo: From the Wikipedia item on suburbia.

Housekeeping note: I’ll be out of town today, but a full-powered TeleBlog will be back by Tuesday afternoon or soon afterwards.

 
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