Who Owns the Bible?

This was originally published in my free weekly newsletter, How It Actually Works.

I’m best known as the “atheist Bible salesman”. I created the #1 Spanish language Bible app & eventually sold that business to a public company on the Nasdaq.

Today I’m sharing one of the most interesting facts I discovered while working in the religion industry.

Most people don’t realize that Bible translations are copyrighted. I.e. you can’t sell the Bible without first licensing it from the proper owner.

So who owns the Bible?

There’s thousands of translation of the Bible, so let’s talk about just one: the bestselling English translation aka the NIV.

The NIV copyright is owned by an organization named Biblica. Instead of publishing the NIV themselves, they chose to sell the license to the copyright for more money than God (pun intended).

And guess who bought the NIV license for North America?

Rupert Murdoch & News Corp.

(Technically it’s a subsidiary of News Corp called Zondervan.)

That’s interesting, but it gets better.

Zondervan sells a lot of bibles in a lot of different languages. And so it turns out that Zondervan, owned by News Corp, is the largest publisher of Bibles in the world.

The biggest seller of Bibles is the same company that owns Fox News, HarperCollins, Dow Jones, 20th Century Fox, and others.

Every industry is full of tiny details like this that you’d never know unless you worked there.

What are the interesting facts about your industry that outsiders don’t know?

Hit reply & tell me, I want to hear it all. Give me the gory details!

- Trevor

The Links

Up or Out

How promotions work in big tech companies.

Open, by Andre Agassi (book)

Gives you a glimpse into what it takes to be the best in the world.

Founder of a mostly successful startup talks openly about his mistakes. E.g. goes into detail about how he regrets turning down an 8-figure acquisition offer, including showing the #’s and emails from the acquirer.

Another favorite is how he lost his mind at his board of directors during a round of layoffs. That didn’t end well.

This was originally published in my weekly newsletter, How It Actually Works.