At a hearing on Capitol Hill in May, James Moroney, the publisher of the Dallas Morning News, told Congress about negotiations he’d just had with the online retailer Amazon (AMZN). The idea was to license his newspaper’s content to the Kindle, Amazon’s new electronic reader. “They want seventy per cent of the subscription revenue,” Moroney testified.

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Over the past few weeks there has been a flurry of reappraisals of the Long Tail, most of which center around the question of whether it creates bigger blockbusters or smaller ones (more concentrated markets or less concentrated ones).

My predictions have always been that massive increase in variety plus massive improvements in “filters” (tools to make it easier to find new stuff that’s right for you) would tend to reduce the blockbuster effect and redistribute attention over a wider range. And, indeed, that’s what the data I cited in my book showed, where online markets of books, DVDs and music saw between 20 and 40 percent of the demand shift to products not available in traditional bricks and mortar stores.

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