Johnnie
I read this only a couple of days ago - it has been a real eye opener for me.

Of course the current model only has space for the best sellers - not just books or music but also say food. As retailing has become more concentrated, so shelf space has got squeezed. If you cant do a million items a month you can't get space etc.

My aha is that one of the aspects of the new internet age will bee to offer abundant choice so that a book with 3,000 readers is a success for the writer. That a singer with 20,000 fans is viable. That a book like The Gaping Void can be pulled back from being g out of print and become a best seller. That a small baker can sell bread locally, that a condiment maker can sell globally.

Is eBay and Amazon only at the very beginning of setting in motion a market based on an abundance of small items?

What new models will emerge. Will Hugh "Hughtrain" the small into the light of the market and viability?

Its exciting - do you get the feeling that we are so close to seeing how to do this?

Rob, I'm only starting to get my head around the Long Tail too. It ties in well with David Weinberger's Small Pieces, Loosely Joined.

One way of looking at it is to acknowledge that even "big" brands are just mental shorthand for lots of small players operating under an apparent common identity. Maybe the whole tail is long, so to speak.