Our company felt that offering Bible texts as extra-cost add-on modules was counterproductive for three main reasons.  One is that we wanted to be positioned as far as possible for charging money for the Word of God itself, and putting all offered Bible texts in the BibleWorks base package was our best avenue to accomplish this.  The second was that offering Bible texts as modules is more expensive, both for the customer and for us.  It was more expensive for the customer because publishers, having a much lower volume on modules, charge more per module in an attempt to make up the difference.  And it was more expensive for us because the administrative overhead in preparing and licensing individual modules is much greater than that on the prorated administrative cost of having the text in our base package.  Those extra module administrative costs would also have to have been passed to the customer, driving up customer Bible text module prices still more.  The third reason was that customers ordering Bible texts as modules will necessarily order only the few with which they’re familiar and thus lose a chance to become exposed to other texts with which they might have profitably acquainted themselves if browsing had been available.  Publishers supported us in this, eager to have their texts exposed to a wide audience.

In summary, both publishers and customers won when BibleWorks didn’t offer Bible texts as modules.

Last updated: RG/June 16, 2018