Takeaways:
- The areas where publishers can add value are shrinking.
- Don’t look for diminishing niches. Think more broadly.
There’s an old argument called “the God of the gaps” that says we used to need gods to explain thunder and famine and life, but as we advance in our knowledge of the world, God is required for fewer and fewer things.
There’s something analogous going on with publishers.
When I started in publishing, a publisher could make a living simply by collecting documents from a federal agency and distributing them to interested parties.
The internet destroyed that model because anybody could get the text for free. Publishers had to add value to the text: answering questions, creating checklists and charts, and explaining what the documents meant and what they required.
Rick Rockelli, an old colleague, explained this as NTAP: news, text, analysis, and planning. He argued we should get away from news and text and focus on analysis and planning. That was a good strategy back then.
Now, AI is infringing on those areas as well. Publishers continue to retreat into irrelevance as technology limits what value they can add.
Do you want to know the difference between a Roth and a traditional IRA? ChatGPT can tell you. Why do we need publishers?
Perhaps God’s plight can offer a suggestion. Publishers should focus on the personal, not the mechanical.
Publishers need to major in things that computers can’t do (yet), which mostly means looking at the big picture and providing context. A computer can answer a question, but can it give advice? Can it see trends and make forecasts?
If not today, then maybe next week. While there are still gaps, publishers need to find and fill them.
Rather than merely hunting for diminishing gaps, think creatively about all the possible ways that people need information and focus on the things a computer isn’t good at. Or at least on those things that people don’t trust a computer to do.
Prefer to listen? I discuss all the articles in the latest Krehbiel Letter in my Krehbiel Letter Podcast.
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