From the friendly caves of Pixie Hollow.

 

It’s a legal and a cultural requirement of creating a publication (in print or electronically), in Australia.

But I’m betting you’ve never heard of Legal Deposit. 

I’m also betting that your trend-following, digital marketing consultants have never heard of it either.

I really dislike saying generic things like, ‘most business owners have never heard of it’, but in my experience it’s absolutely true. Most lawyers I speak to haven’t even heard of it. 

But if you’re producing a publication in Australia, you have Legal Deposit obligations. 

If you’re wondering what it is, Legal Deposit is a program that requires you to submit a copy of every single publication (yes, including serial publications) to your State Library and the National Library of Australia. It helps to preserve the cultural outputs of Australia. This is where all those amazing archives come from. Make sense? As a business owner who publishes, you have an obligation to contribute to society’s future archives.

And yes, Sunshine, it still applies to your digital newsletter.  It’s “born digital”, and whether it applies to YOU SPECIFICALLY depends on what state you’re in.

Happily, there is a new Legal Deposit platform called National eDeposit that simplifies your life, because it takes care of your state and national obligations all at once. Trawl the web ocean and ye shall find.

In the meantime, start thinking about what it will mean for your business’s electronic publications. Yes, websites, blogs, emails, eNewsletters, ebooks, whitepapers, case studies, they ALL count.

I know this stuff, because I’m a publisher. It’s why your other digital consultants never mentioned it. They make a splash, but they’ve never been in publishing.

Why am I telling you this?

Because when you decide to analyse your customer comments, and then create meaningful artefacts using that research, the material you create will benefit multiple generations. Archival thinking is critical for knowledge capture. That's why I'm offering an analysis for just $550: You'll get wild ideas that will stand the test of time.

You in?

Xx Leticia "shoulda been a lawyer" Mooney