Chris Anderson’s best selling “The Long Tail” has become a highly influential and widely referenced business essay that theorises about the future of modern commerce. At its core, The Long Tail is a dissertation about the economics of abundance.

The book provides a description of a business paradigm that has begun to show the power of seemingly unlimited selection of products and services across a broad spectrum of consumer markets. It provides a perspective about what Anderson claims are “the new truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it.“

“In short, though we still obsess over hits, “Anderson writes, ” they are not quite the economic force they once were. Where are those fickle consumers going instead? No single place. They are scattered to the winds as markets fragment into a thousand niches.”

The book explores a variety of contemporary business examples that include movies, books, and music. Technology and the Internet have made possible an empowered, new world of business marketing in which the combined value of modest sellers and obscure titles equals the sales of the top hits. His examples reveal intriguing possibilities that can be applied to other business models.

In fact, the book may mean more to small business marketers who are nimble and faster to market than slower moving big business. Speed is after all, the currency of business and success loves speed.

Acoustic Bookworm has just released an inexpensive audio version of The Long Tail that you can download right now. Once you download your copy, you can listen to it as an mp3 or go ahead and burn a CD or DVD and listen to it in your car. Very cool!