Re-purpose or re-use?

Recently there's been a lot of buzz about content re-use among publishers, and at conferences and in publications that target publishers. Maybe this is because of the hype around DITA right now, or maybe it's just one of those things that comes and goes on people's radar.

Re-using content is cool, but I wish people would talk more about re-purposing as well, since it often has a more immediate business impact and is easier. And, using our terminology, I think publishers often mean "re-purpose" when they say "re-use". Differentiating between the two is helpful when thinking through the impact on workflow and technology for publishers. This is particularly true for DITA, which is really about re-use rather than re-purposing.

In our lingo to "re-use" content is to put an existing content object (section of text, table, image, etc) into a new editorial context. That makes re-use* an authoring or editorial task—the person doing it needs to understand whether the content "fits". Re-use excites people because they hope it will save them time and money in creating new products or new versions of products. It also raises all sorts of content management concern: Who "owns" re-used content if it is included in multiple contexts? How do you make sure people don't change the content for one context in a way that doesn't work for the others? What if there are rights concerns? What is the size textual unit that is practical to re-use (so that you avoid overwhelming editors with tracking things at the paragraph level)? Re-use is incredibly valuable to publishers (if it wasn't we wouldn't have built it into RSuite CMS), and newer technology makes it feasible in a way it didn't used to be, but you can't ignore the workflow complexities that travel with it.

On the other hand, "re-purposing", which we define as the repackaging and reformatting (presentation) existing content for use in new product contexts and especially on different media, comes with fewer organizational issues and big revenue possibilities. The simplest example is publishing your print content on the web: If you can find a way to make money from your web site while not pilfering print customers, then you might be able to develop a new revenue stream without much editorial impact (assuming your content is in good shape!).

Another angle on repurposing is custom publishing, which often involves taking existing content and reorganizing and rebranding it for publication by a particular customer to its employees or customers. And that's why I thought about all this today - I saw a Folio article about the growth of custom publishing. Check out this quote: "Custom publishing in the business-to-business space is a stealth moneymaker with revenues growing at about 20 percent annually, which [are] on-par with the rate of growth in online revenues, said American Business Media CEO Gordon Hughes..."

Now that is worth some buzz.

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* Ok, this is my first blog footnote ever. I think that means it should be a separate entry, but whatever ... I get totally hung up on whether I should hyphenate "re-use" when it's a verb, when it's a noun, or for both. Plus there's the adjective. I have a preference (hyphenate the verb and adjective but not the noun), but it looks inconsistent. And I hate the way "reuse" looks. (Should be pronounced "royze".) But I don't know why hyphenating the noun looks all wrong to me. So I end up writing with the hyphen in all cases. But when there's no difference, the reader has no clue as to whether the word should be interpreted as noun or verb, and can be confused when reading the rest of the sentence - so I end up rewriting so it's always obvious. And I don't have this issue with re-purpose, since it's always a noun.  I usually don't hyphenate it, until it's next to re-use. And then I decide to be consistent. Oh well! (Guess my editorial roots show.)

Comments

[ann michael]

Lisa - that hyphen thing always messes me up too. I also agree with you that many people SAY re-use when they really mean re-purpose.

Nice post!