WHEN WIRED MAGAZINE editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson coined the term ‘the long tail’, he was referring to music CDs, books and films that continue to sell in small numbers although they may not be new, may never have been all that popular or that were produced as a specialty product for a small audience that maintains a level of sales. Such products make up what is sometimes called ‘back catalog’.

You see this long tail in some music retailers. There, prominently displayed are the new releases, the volume sellers – that, for a time, at least. Elsewhere and less prominently displayed are CDs of older music such as vintage 60s, 70s and 80s.These sell in smaller volumes, however it is the consistency of low volume sales that, collectively, makes them financially worthwhile to keep in stock. Commercially, their sales pattern stands in contrast to the high volume, new music album, the new book by a popular writer, the new blockbuster movie on DVD.

True for social movements to?

It is probably reasonable to take this idea of the long tail and apply it as a way of thinking about social movements. This being so, let’s use it as a thinking tool to look at the permaculture design system.

So what, then, makes up permaculture’s long tail? We’ll start by staying with publishing.

The long tail becomes apparent when we look back over the past 30 years of the permaculture design system. There, we see the persistence of Bill Mollison’s Permaculture – A Designers’ Manual (Mollison was a co-originator of the permaculture design system with David Holmgren) and his Introduction to Permaculture, co-written with Reny Slay. Both of these books followed the classic, bell shape of the product sales curve and today, well along the descending part of that curve, they continue to sell in smaller volumes, 20 years and more after their publication. So too with Rosemary Morrow’s The Earth Users Guide to Permaculture, the Fanton’s The Seed Savers Handbook and other publications on permaculture.

What about David Holmgren’s Permaculture – Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability? My guess is that this book is not yet a long tail product because it maintains a high level of popularity, due partly to its continuing contemporary relevance and to David’s reputation. In this – reputation – David is like Bill in that his name guarantee sales of whatever he writes.

The durability of permaculture publications

More evidence or what is and is not permaculture’s long tail is seen when visiting any comprehensive book seller. Look around the shelves and you will consistently notice a particular set of books: Mollison’s Designers’ Manual and Introduction to Permaculture (less commonly found); David’s Principles and Pathways (quite common); and, occasionally, Rosemary Morrow’s book.

Curiously, these books, with the exception of Rosemary’s, are also encountered in another type of book seller – those specialising in remaindered titles.

Space on the book shop shelves is a little like that in the supermarket – it is a major influence on what the public buys. Sales are influenced, first, by whether a new title is displayed on the prominent ‘new releases’ shelves or on the shelves of its specialty area. Once on the shelves, it matters whether the book is displayed cover-out or spine-out. It’s a matter of visibility. As a book’s sales start to wane, it might be moved to a specialty area of the shop while sales continue at a reasonable volume, perhaps to join the long tail. If not, it is replaced by better selling titles and not re-stocked.

The result of this is that the slow-moving titles stay on the warehouse shelves of book distributors and publishers, shelf space that, too, is valuable. What happens then is that these remaining titles – these remaindered books – are on-sold to those specialist remaindered bookshops. Here, they are sold cheaply and you get the situation in which, if you encounter a title while in stock with a remaindered seller, you can get it much cheaper than the retail price from the long tail of other retailers. It’s a characteristic of titles stocked by remaindered sellers that they are only in stock while stocks last. It comes down to luck as to whether you walk into the shop while the title you would buy cheaply is there.

Why permaculture titles appear less-frequently on the shelves of remainered bookshops is because they are often self-published. This gives the author a high degree of control over the distribution of the book and spins out the life of the title marketed to a particular readership. Even so, titles join the long tail here, too. It should be safe to say that sales of The Seed Savers Handbook, and Introduction to Permaculture have declined since first publication and now constitute a continuing though low level of sales.

Thus it is with remaindered permaculture books. To use Basement Books, below Sydney’s Railway Square at the entrance to the pedestrian tunnel under Central Station as an example, I have found the following titles on offer from time to time: Mollison’s Designers Manual ($25 rather than the usual retail price of around $140) and his Introduction to Permaculture; Jenny Allen’s case studies of her property design ($12.50 or $24 depending on edition); the Fanton’s Seed Savers’ Handbook ($12.50) among other titles of interest.

Because of the infrequency at which titles appear, remaindered books pose little threat to continued sales from the long tail.

And so to permaculture education

Can we extent this concept of the long tail to permaculture education? Maybe.

Here’s how: Many permaculture educators register as teachers with the Permaculture Institute. Doing so obliges them to use the Designers’ Manual as a key text, though sometimes it is described as a curriculum despite it not being formulated in the familiar competency based learning style. How this can be done otherwise was demonstrated by Blue Mountains permaculture educator, Rosemary Morrow in the 1990s, when she produced a companion teacher’s manual to accompany her book on permaculture.

Critics say that the Manual was produced over 20 years ago and has never been reissued in a new, updated edition, something uncommon with text books; that the world has changed substantially in that time; that it takes no account of modern society or of online media so important to the spread of permaculture today, nor to social networking and other, newer social practices of potential value to the spread of the design system, especially to a younger demographic for whom such technologies are everyday objects.

Thus, permaculture education can be seen as being within its own long tail rather than taking new, innovative forms.

Applying concepts to the design system

This application of the concept of the long tail to the permaculture design system has been brief. It was done, though, to suggest that new concepts an new ideas can be used to review the history and structure of a social movement such as permaculture and that valuable information may be gleaned that could yield better understandings.

Permaculture lacks any comprehensive documentation of its history, and its capacity to self-examing through monitoring and evlaluation has not been good. The use of concepts originating outside the design system may provide the tools that yield the needed insights.