Anderson presents a discussion about the economics of abundance--the rise of the niche--as the cost of reaching consumers drops dramatically and markets shift.

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Q&A

In business, less will be more

There's a major shift in the way businesses offer their products to the public, according to Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson. His new book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, explores the ways in which our culture and economy are moving away from "hits" (popular products and markets), which reside at the head of the demand curve, and toward a huge number of niches in the tail of that curve. This "Long Tail" is resulting in a massive increase in choices for consumers, who until now have, by and large, unwittingly had their tastes shaped by what is widely available or most popular. BookPage asked Anderson, who writes a popular blog on the subject, to explain it all; he responded from a plane high over Texas.

What do you mean by the Long Tail?

Last year, 65,000 music albums were released—only 700 made it to the shelves of America's No. 1 CD retailer, Wal-Mart. If you're into anything that isn't in the top 700 (whether it's non-mainstream or simply not a new release), you understand the Long Tail. Likewise if you're into documentaries, foreign films, or any other kind of movie that isn't stocked at Blockbuster. Many interesting examples were put forward by readers of the [Long Tail] blog, too, such as microbrews as the Long Tail of beer and insurgency as the Long Tail of warfare.

You emphasize that, while choice is certainly preferable to scarcity, there remains a need f