Law of the instrument
“It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
So it was no surprise that a survey of the newspaper and magazine industries by the ValueNotes Sourcing Practice (”dedicated to researching the outsourcing industry”) found that “growing dependence on digital presence means that providers have an opportunity to help publishers address varied forms, software, platforms and devices.”
The survey also found that “(newspaper and magazine) buyers remain yet to be convinced. Value addition is likely to remain an in-house task for many publishers, unless service providers can demonstrate significant capability.”
Thank heavens.
I was asked recently if it is possible to launch a publication by substantially outsourcing its components, and I answered, “Yes; that model is increasingly the norm these days.”
If I’d been asked, “What do you think about outsourcing the business processes that add value?”, my answer would have been simply, “That’s a bad idea.” Giving another firm the right and responsibility to add value hands my business to a third party. In time, perhaps in short order, I engender my own competition.
Yes, some firms are strategically placing bets on two futures. But giving a third party responsibility for your added value: where’s the sense in that?
As content providers cut staff deeply and persistently, it becomes even more important to remember that they need to own and extend their relationships with their reading communities. Those relationships are seldom a function of production or even marketing. They are rooted in the creation of and engagement with content, something publishers should be reluctant to outsource.
Comments
So I totally don’t agree. If publishers suck at engaging with readers, then they SHOULD outsource to folks who are good at it. Such as booksellers - good book sellers.
I get where you are going, but I think the value add—the special skill set, the incredibly rich and nuanced nature of what really good booksellers (and I’m talking about folks both on and offline who do this, and do this well) is being at best under-estimated, and at worst under-appreciated.
Yes, pubs should get to know their readers. But, seriously? Do most pubs know how to do that? Is that where their efforts are best placed? Assuming that really good intermediaries exist (which they do - though they don’t always come up first in a google search), might pubs efforts be better spent helping them help readers?
Just a thought.
Posted by
kat meyer on 04/06 at 01:05 PM
You’re right; I would give a somewhat different answer in advising book publishers. There are other options there, although book publishers that don’t “own” a community in the future will have to be very good at sourcing and shaping content or risk being disintermediated by players like Amazon and Author Solutions.
I meant the post to address newspaper and magazine publishers, who are the target of the outsourcing study. I do think that these publishers, who are outsourcing much of their content work as they downsize, risk diminishing the very thing that adds value. “We can outsource reporting to India” doesn’t sound so far-fetched any more. I do think that winds up being the wrong option.
Posted by
Brian O'Leary on 04/06 at 01:34 PM
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