Editing Long tail (section)

===Effects of online access===
[[Erik Brynjolfsson]], [[Yu (Jeffrey) Hu]], and [[Michael D. Smith (economist)|Michael D. Smith]] found that a large proportion of [[Amazon.com]]'s book sales come from obscure books that were not available in brick-and-mortar stores.  They then quantified the potential value of the long tail to consumers. In an article published in 2003, these authors showed that, while most of the discussion about the value of the Internet to consumers has revolved around lower prices, consumer benefit (a.k.a. [[consumer surplus]]) from access to increased product variety in online book stores is ten times larger than their benefit from access to lower prices online.<ref>Brynjolfsson, Erik; Yu (Jeffrey) Hu, and Michael D. Smith, [https://ssrn.com/abstract=400940 "Consumer Surplus in the Digital Economy: Estimating the Value of Increased Product Variety at Online Booksellers"], ''Management Science'', 49 (11), November 2003. [https://ssrn.com/abstract=400940 working paper version, April 2003]</ref>