Media Hacks #19 is out! It’s been a while and I’ve missed my favorite podcast dearly. As always, it got me thinking. This time, the topic of thought is Mitch Joel’s response to a review of his book Six Pixels of Separation that suggested there was nothing new in his book.
I posit that we generally consider “new” content to be content never before published. A book contains new ideas if nobody’s ever written them down before. But how new can something be? Most of the theories behind new actionable content are not what I’d consider to be recent discoveries. Several times I’ve heard internet marketing and the “new” way of doing business compared to the ye olde times when people bartered and worked with people they knew and lived close to. The way people interact, the way business gets done, and the way you get repeat customers is the same as it was hundreds of years ago! Here’s where “new” gets a revised definition. For content to be considered new when it’s based on old theories, it needs to contain actionable bits that pertain to the new tools available.
But this is what’s really on my mind: what if you can trick yourself into thinking something’s not new because you already came to the same conclusions on your own? I remember enjoying Tribes by Seth Godin. When I got done, I realized that instead of a new outlook on the world, it had given me more confidence in the outlook I already had. Most of the tips Seth wrote I already knew because they were observations about how the world works that I had already made. Could I criticize it for not being new enough? I think newness is up to the individual to decide.
Fortunately, it’s not just the newness factor that makes content valuable. The formulation of the ideas is what makes a good author. It’s how well it’s written that sinks it into your brain. If two people publish books with the same concepts but the second one you read is the one that sticks, it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t new.
