In the New Yorker, John Cassidy ruminates on Wired editor Chris Anderson’s “long tail” hypothesis and concludes that although it’s an idea both unoriginal and flawed, it’s still bad news for mid-list authors. How’s that for a tricky bit of pessimism. Makes you feel a touch of ennui descend just to read that sentence, doesn’t it!

Says Cassidy:

Blockbusters and niche products will continue to coexist, because they’re flip sides of the same phenomenon, something economists call “increasing returns,” whereby the big get bigger and the rest fight for the scraps. A long-tail world doesn’t threaten the whales or the minnows; it threatens those who cater to the neglected middle, such as writers of “mid-list” fiction and producers of adult dramas.

I don’t believe that for a second, and not only because I naturally distrust apoplectic apocalyptic apocrypha.*

Because here’s the thing: there’s money to be made in mid-list fiction and adult dramas, and all the other products and services that cater to the “neglected middle.” And because there’s money there, people will figure out how to make it.

Or put another way: whenever there’s an infrastructure shift like what we’re seeing today with the Internet, a few people manage to snatch up all the good spaces on the board before the rest of us realize what’s going on, and as a result, for awhile, they seem to control the game. Look at what happened with the railroads, to cite an obvious example.

But eventually it settles out. Not everyone can be a railroad baron or found an Amazon, but there are delicious opportunities for the smart people who are thinking, right now, about how to reach the neglected median strip of the Internet superhighway. So don’t despair yet. Despite what you read. This is all only just beginning, this Internet thing.

*Sorry, it’s late, I’m punchy!