MoBible - Why LifeWay Wants You to Play with Your Phone in Church

LifeWay Christian Resources is the half-billion dollar nonprofit publishing arm of the largest Protestant denomination in the world with some 16 million members and 100,000+ member and nonmember church customers. How is this 120 year old, Titanic-sized, religious, institutional publisher becoming a leader in the technology space?

MOBILE APPS LifeWay currently has fifteen iOS apps in the Apple App Store with twelve spots in the top paid and free book apps for iPhone and iPad.

• What is working and what is not for our mobile apps and why?
• What opportunities do we see for the differentiation and value stratification for tablet and phone apps.
• What kind of numbers are we really seeing?

eBOOKS How did a book by a first-time, religious fiction author become the #1 book for Kindle? (Not the #1 religious book. Not the #1 fiction book. The #1 title for all Kindle books!)

• Overcoming the resistance to “free” and other price promotions.
• The unexpected benefits of successful promotions.
• eBook+, chapters and parts, and other content experiments in enhanced ebooks

ONLINE On September 1, 2010 the Beta for MyStudyBible.com went live offering 100% of the content absolutely free from arguably the most significant print publication in the history of our company—The HCSB Study Bible. After investing tens of millions of dollars and nearly twenty years in development, why are we giving away the content of our flagship product?

• The content and pricing decisions we made and why.
• B2C baby steps: what we’re learning about subscriptions, rentals, and purchasing.
• The first 90 days: what we learned from customer feedback and how it changed our plans.