Tyndale commentaries no longer in collections

[HelgeH]

I have been investing a lot in accordance bible resources recently and have been recommending Accordance to my friends. One of my main sales pitches to go with accordance compared to other competitors has been that the Tyndale series are included in some of the introductory collections, and with $199 for English learner or $399 for English discoverer or triple learner, that was almost alone worth a large portion of the price. Yet alone getting an excellent software focusing on the bible text to go alongside with such a great commentary series.

 

Recently a friend of mine bought an English discoverer collection based on these recommendations, and he has several times come back to me to tell how helpful especially the Tyndale series have been for him in both personal bible study and preparing teachings for bible study days in his church.

 

I am very much enjoying using Accordance 13 so far and consider the upgrade well money spent. Noticing today that the Tyndale series seems to have been switched with the Wiersbe BE Series as the introductory commentary in basically all collections apart from English master at $36,999 somehow dampened the enjoyment in terms of how excited I am to recommend Accordance to new users that are looking for a first-time introductory library. Most of my friends are non-bible professionals who love the Word and are involved in their local church as well as working in business or other areas of society.

 

I am aware that there are probably many good reasons for this, and that the excellent staff at Oaktree has been discussing both upgrade possibilities of the series and the removal of Tyndale as a part of collections in a thorough way. The Tyndale series have not been updated in a long time, and I would dare to guess that this has to a large extent been a result of being a part of a collection that are hard to upgrade when it comes to licencing deals with the publisher. Possibly also that the publisher upped the price so that the current price levels of collections would have not been able to stay in the same range. I can only speculate in the underlying causes, but I do notice that this change has been a quiet one.

 

No matter what the reasons are, I must say that the accordance collections are now harder to pitch to my friends as a $199/$399 all-that-you-need-for the-basics tool for their bible study. It is still an excellent software, and the search functionality and other core functions really outshines any competition as far as I am concerned. Yet the Wiersbe Be Series is in a different league of the Tyndale series in terms of commentary quality, and the base collections are hence less attractive in Accordance 13 than they were in Accordance 12. My friend mentioned above were looking at saving up some extra and go with a competitor package, but I convinced him to stay with accordance and consider how much powerful resources and functionality there are at such a cheap price. I would probably be a customer anyhow, but this exact sale would likely not have happened with the current collection offering in accordance 13. Even though I still would have recommended Accordance as the #1 bible study software in so many other ways.

 

To end on a more positive note. These changes probably means that we are going to see updated Tyndale commentaries in the not too distant future. Although many of the classic volumes still hold up to their worth, many of the updated volumes seems promising. Seeing that the earlier thread requesting updates are one of the most viewed threads on the forum, this is going to be a most welcomed upgrade for many of us.

 

Pax et bonum

Helge

 

(I wrote the comment above two days ago and have been pondering whether to publish it in the forums or not. Please understand my intentions that I do not want to criticise or come with negative remarks just to tell them, but rather comment and possibly have a discussion on some strategic choices in the selection of tools for the new collections in accordance 13. These thoughts are emerging mostly from my finance and business management background and are coming from a motive to bless Oaktree and Accordance. They are solely my own observations and considerations in regard to the accordance 13 collections, and I am aware that I could be wrong in this matter and base my conclusions on the wrong basis. I really am very fond of the Accordance software and are very happy with the changes in the Accordance 13 core functionalities.) 

 

[Helen Brown]

We do appreciate your comments and feedback. Yes, the Tyndale Commentaries are excellent, but the publishers increased the price to the point that we could no longer afford to put them into the lower collections, unless we increased the price of the collections themselves. The decision was not made lightly.