Chris Anderson's new book The Long Tail has been eagerly anticipated. Why? He blogged it first, of course. Partly due to the blogosphere effect and partly because it explains a concept that holds an innate attraction for many of us, it has been greeted with enormous enthusiasm and has been fallen upon as a kind of gospel for our age by content creators in many media. The Long Tail suggests that in this culture of the blockbuster in which we seemingly live, the wonder of the Internet is that it enables - no, encourages, even - the niche interest to flourish as well as the mass market. So, online retailers can afford to 'stock' thousands of titles and are therefore able to benefit from the 'long tail' of small scale sales; niche interest groups can indulge their interests, networking with the comparitively few others that share their passion. Natasha Walter has explained it all much more cogently here at Guardian Unlimited and Chris Anderson himself discusses his book on the Guardian's Newsdesk podcast.