Great Training Session in Manila. Thank you!

[Joel Arnold]

Just want to express my appreciation to Accordance for sending Ryan Mudge to our college here in Manila this week. I had no idea what kind of interest we would get during the conference. Accordance created a significant buzz. Guys that I have been trying to sell on Accordance for years were suddenly paying attention. Guys that had never given paid Bible software a second look were coming to me to find out what package they should buy. I’ve not seen anything like it at our college before. Ryan did a great job.

 

I’ve been sold on Accordance for 15+ years. This week I realized that Accordance has a unique fit for the developing world for three reasons: 

(1) Accordance doesn’t hog system resources, so people that are using obsolete machines (most of my friends here) can still use great software. 

(2) Accordance is working with us on price.  People won’t / can’t pay $1500 for functional software in a place where a day’s wage is $10. The efforts you are making to provide affordable resources make a massive difference for us.

(3) Accordance is willing to put some investment into foreign language Bibles—in some cases (like Tagalog), languages that no other software platform has. This is huge.

 

I’m more than a little biased to say that some of the most exciting things in Christianity today are happening in the global south and in SE Asia. I want the burgeoning church to discover the power of quality Bible software as I have. Thank you, Accordance for contributing so meaningfully to the life of the church and viewing your work as a ministry. It shows!

 

 

[Fabian]

Thanks for sharing your impressions. 

 

 

To point (3)

(3) Accordance is willing to put some investment into foreign language Bibles—in some cases (like Tagalog), languages that no other software platform has. This is huge.

Thats great you have it, but there are too much languages that don't have a Bible in Accordance. And OakTree try to avoid it to bring more to the store. Even for languages a day's wage is enormous more than $10.

 

Greetings

 

Fabian

[MattChristianOT]

Thanks for sharing your impressions. 

 

 

To point (3)

Thats great you have it, but there are too much languages that don't have a Bible in Accordance. And OakTree try to avoid it to bring more to the store. Even for languages a day's wage is enormous more than $10.

 

Greetings

 

Fabian

Is it due to interest or more to licensing? I would think the greater Accordance market is not focused on a lot of languages beyond biblical languages, yet the need for resources in other languages is astronomical

[Rick Bennett]

Thanks for sharing your impressions. 

 

 

To point (3)

Thats great you have it, but there are too much languages that don't have a Bible in Accordance. And OakTree try to avoid it to bring more to the store. Even for languages a day's wage is enormous more than $10.

 

Greetings

 

Fabian

 

We're not avoiding anything. Licensing international language Bibles is actually a pretty complex process, much more so than the majority of any other title we license. And even for public domain resources it is not straightforward. Just because a random website hosts a text which may fall into Public Domain status in the U.S. does not mean it is internationally, and also the credibility of such texts is often suspect. We just ran into a case where a Bible that was supposedly public domain actually isn't, and now we have to go through an overly complicated process to determine this, and then either give it away for free or license it.

 

All that to say, we are very much interested in expanding International language Bibles, even to the extent that we will not generate enough revenue from these Bibles to cover the administrative costs in licensing them, not to mention development, marketing, database management, etc. 

 

And to the OP, thank you. This is encouraging to hear. 

[Timothy Jenney]

I'll second Rick's comment, as I work to license many of our international Bibles.

 

We are aware that some online free websites host these Bibles; they may or may not have permission. Either way, that doesn't mean we can necessarily acquire a license to put the Bible in Accordance. We do our best  to be ethical, so if we can't legally acquire the permission to publish, we don't do it. We also know that some other companies have licensed international Bibles in the distant past, but the copyright holders have since substantially increased their royalty rates.

 

As to more modern translations in international languages, it's hard even to get a response from most international Bible publishers. I've had several cases where a publisher has initially expressed an interest, so I contact them. I never hear back. A few of them want outrageous royalties (You think $10 a Bible is bad?), a guaranteed number of sales of every year, or some other condition that we simply cannot meet. Happily, that is not always the case, but it does occur more with international Bibles than any other kind of resource.

 

Rick is also right about costs. Once we do license an international Bible, we generally sell very few of them. We're pleased to be able to offer Bibles in an array of modern languages, but it is a labor of love that offers little financial reward.

 

We are now pursuing a different avenue, one that may give us access to Bibles in many more languages.