Ups and Downs of the Long Tail

The Long Tail (in recent popular parlance) is the string of unique items, sold in small quantities, which are more "findable" in the online age. It's cool in a lot of ways, making all sorts of things float to the attention of possibly interested people ("if you like Doctor Who, maybe you'll like Diana Wynne Jones!") But for me, there's a downside. I keep finding all of these out-of-print, not-at-my-local-library, hardly-anyone-on-the-planet-seems-to-have THINGS that I get interested in. The local public radio station used to play a particular version of the Marseillaise (French national anthem) every July 14, Bastille Day. Out of print. One of my favorite writing blogs has a "what books do you read again and again?" posting, and someone mentions some intriguing books I've never heard of. Out of print, and copies of area public libraries are missing, withdrawn, or in storage.

Now back in the day (ah, my misspent youth), if something was out of print, that was it. My favorite author as a child was E. Nesbit, a British author from the early 1900s who wrote books about children and magic (magic cities, magical creatures, mermaids) and name-dropped some of her favorite authors in her works. E. Nesbit was born in 1858, and in the 1950s there was a British publisher who republished most of her books in a somewhat uniform edition, a few of which managed to make their way to the children's section of my downtown public library (while we lived in the suburbs, my parents worked downtown, so I was there a lot.) Of course I read and reread them, and wanted them for my own. But they were British books, and for some reason it was almost impossible back then to get a British book through an American bookstore. So I managed to get a few, found others in American editions, and hoped that some day, I could find them all.

Flash forward many years, and online bookstores make it possible for me to use my disposable income to find them used in various locations (I even found some at used booksales, which is a story in itself.) I have over the years picked up copies of nearly all of E. Nesbit's children's books (and ran out of shelf space in the process.) So I'm tempted to do the same when I want that recording of the Mareillaise, or those historical novels that the public libraries don't carry. You can even buy things online from British bookstores now - how cool is that? The Long Tail makes it so easy to spend our money, darn it. I have to reign in my desires and be fiscally prudent, especially these days. I make my little lists, and allow myself a few at a time.

But I do have to commend the Long Tail effect of that popular author, J. K. Rowling. With the popularity of Harry Potter, publishers looked around and said, "who else writes books about kids and magic? What do we have on our backlist?" So the great author Edward Eager comes back in print, the writer whose book Half Magic I found in fourth grade, which led me to E. Nesbit and so many other writers years ago. So I can flesh out my Edward Eager collection, and buy my daughter her own copies (in print!) I guess I can't complain too much.