[sword-devel] Often-requested yet never-available Bibles

[Jonathan Morgan]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 12:17 PM, Jonathan Marsden<jmarsden at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> Jonathan Morgan wrote:
>
>>> On May 10th, 2007, he reported having got a reply to the effect that
>>> "the NIV costs US$10,000 to license and then US$10 per copy. There is also a
>>> rather detailed approval process."
> ...
>> I remember the discussion, and I believe the terms were exactly the
>> same.  Now they sell NIV, TNIV and NIrV together for "one low price"
>> of $29.99.
>
>>> Being a non-income "organization", CrossWire is just not in this league.
>
>> I agree.  I don't think the amount reasonable, either, but that is
>> another story.
>
> It doesn't seem all that impossible.  At those prices, mental math says
> the breakeven is 500 copies.  You just need the $10000 up front.
>
> If ten CrossWire people kicked in $1000 each (or twenty people @ $500
> each), and if (a big if?) there was a reasonable expectation of selling
> 500 NIV modules within a year or two, it would be doable.  Are there 500
> CrossWire users interested in the NIV at this price?  Doing something
> like that would change the "feel" of what CrossWire is, somewhat, so the
> group would have to decide if this sort of venture is something it
> *wants* to do.  But to me, it sounds fairly feasible, *if* the group
> chooses to make it a serious goal.

Those numbers aren't quite right.  The $30 is for the NIV, TNIV and
NIrV bundle.  Licensing costs for these are unknown, but I'm guessing
it's more than $10.  I personally would not in any way support selling
the NIV by itself for $30 (or just about any other version, for that
matter).  Even the $10 is unreasonable, IMHO (compare it to the price
of paper Bibles and conjecture at the production and replication costs
of the two media and you will see what I mean).

Even if we agreed on that, you would still need to overcome the
statement: "Our policy at this time does not allow us to release the
NIV database to individuals or for use in Linux based, open source or
shareware software products; therefore IBS-STL will not be granting
your request for use of the NIV."

Jon