Does Zondervan "get it" at last?

John has a link to an interview on Christianity Today with Maureen Girkins, Zondervan’s CEO in the interview she says that Zondervan's singing and dancing all celebrity Audio Bible The Bible Experience was their best-selling Bible in 2007. That should be no surprise to PodBiblers, our un-advertised, read-by-plain-ordinary-people, Bible delivers more than 40,000 audio Bible chapters each month!

They asked her:

Can you tease out an example of how publishing will change?

Wireless phones, which didn't exist 20 years ago, have changed not only the way people communicate but also the way they live. People are going to read, and they're going to read paper for the rest of our lifetimes. But I'm convinced that different distribution for content will change the way we live. We have entered the digital world. It's not like we're just stepping our toe into it. The Bible Experience audio Bible was the best-selling Bible of 2007.

I think we can make some predictions today for how further distribution changes will alter the way we live our Christian life. The spiritual journey many of us have will be changed by the Internet and digital technology. But I'd like a little more time in this discovery process before I can vocalize how.

Now, this is cautious, but much less cautious than print-based publishers usually are! It makes projects like David's for mobile phones or our PodBible relevance visible!

(Audio?) Bible on mobile phones

David Ker, who works in Mozambique - where mobile phones are less expensive to run than NZ, and Internet less available - is putting together a project to make the Bible available in various ways by mobile phone. To listen in, or join the discussion just subscribe to the blog...

Incidentally if you have any knowledge or ideas that can help with making PodBible more accessible to mobile phone users please comment, we have the domain PodBible.mobi but do not yet really know how to use it!

PodBible Blogged

Heidi Campbell who teaches communication at Texas A & M, is in NZ for a few weeks taking part in various colloquia and things, she is the latest blogger to post about this audio Bible "PodBible: An experiment in MP3ing the Good Book". Heidi will be meeting with a bunch of others to talk about her work, and especially her study of religious bloggers. When the date is finalised I'll post details here so those in NZ (now a minority of PodBible listeners) can get to meet her.

Breaking records and new plans

PodBible has so far in June regularly broken the 1,000 visitor per day mark (a few days have been just under the "magic" figure, but others as high a 1,200 more than make up for them. We have also been delivering about half a gigabyte of data every day on average. That equates to thousands of chapters each day, so clearly not everyone is using the chapter-a-day format!

In the light of this usage we have several plans for making PodBible more useful:

• somewhere for you to "talk" about what you hear - the details even the broad outline is still unclear, but we'd like YouTalk which is what we'll call it to be informal, easy to use, in various ways (including a Twitter-like box with thoughts people are recording right now, that changes live as people add new things
• downloadable "CDs" and "Cassette tapes" that people can use to make up PodBible for the elderly, or to listen to a whole book on a long drive (even if they do not have one of those clever MP3 on your car radio gadgets)
  
• introductions to Bible books and links to other helps to understanding "what's going on"
  
• and, last but biggest, something like PodBible in other languages (see xoBible for one dream of this) remember the second highest usage of PodBible by country is now China and several countries in the top 30 are not traditional English speaking places!
  

Performing Job

Hi, all, not really PodBible, but related. A group of us are talking about recording the book of Job, with each "character" read by a different person. We will be doing this on Librivox so the result needs to be in the public domain. That means we can't use a modern translation. Please listen to the three possibilities listed at this post on Tim's blog, and comment on their suitability!

5 Minute Bible

If you like PodBible, you may like 5 Minute Bible a new "audio blog" by Tim that will have 5 minute audio about Bible passages. Sometimes they'll be more devotional like the first post:

• Praising the fradulent agent on Luke 16,
  

sometimes more of a lecture like the second:

• Humour in the Bible: Part 1: Introducing Saul

Music and Bible

Listeners to PodBible may be interested in another audio Bible project the Manna Bible is providing readings of Scripture with a musical backing track specially written to dramatise the text. So far they seem to have just a few chapters done - it is a massive project. They needed copyright free translations so are providing KJV and WEB. If I find out more I will blog about Manna Bible again...

Audio Bible in a Year mentioned on Better Bibles

Thanks, Wayne, for mentioning that one of the options here is to hear the whole audio CEV Bible in a year. Basically if your new year's resolution was to read the Bible in 2007 but you prefer to listen than read remember you just need either to log on daily to PodBible and download the day's chunk, or set your blog or podcast software to do it for you!