Bible printing, a loss of money for the WTS

by oppostate 22 Replies latest watchtower scandals

• 

  oppostate

  So I brought this up in another thread... But I think it needs its own discussion.

  ---

  Having had one of the new grey leatherette and silver edged bibles with the new appendixes in my hand

  I immediately thought of all the custom covered NWT Bibles you see some publishers sporting at meetings

  and I can say that I was not very impressed.

  Also the fact that the CO's and wives who'd been given one had to turn it back in seemed very off-putting.

  Why did they have to turn them back in? Was there some error in printing? Did thousands of Bibles get printed only to be shredded?

  No? Well then...

  Did they make a business decision that it would be too costly to print them en masse?

  This seems to be the case. There have been too many folks "giving" away Bibles with the plasticky covers.

  I admit I was one of those, rather than place the magazines I'd put 8 or ten NWT's in my bookbag and sometimes place all of them in one day.

  Somehow I felt this was better than placing WTS study literature. Why? I dunno... maybe because it is a translation of the Holy Scriptures even if heavily slanted towards WTS beliefs.

  I think that not enough contributions were donated for these cheap Bibles.

  The new covers were supposed to cut down the price by a US dollar per copy.

  Or so we were told.

  The Friends didn't even contribute a dollar per copy when all was said, printed, shipped, picked up and placed.

  In other words, Bible printing was losing the WTS money and that was a big "No, no!".

  So the new grey Bibles underwent a trial run to see what publishers thought of them and the question was: Would they contribute enough to make money on the new Bibles?

  Obviously the answer is "No!" Not unless all the cheap Bibles were all gone. The fancy features of the new Grey Bible weren't enough to make publishers prefer them to the cheap plasticky cover issue.

  So the plasticky covers had to go. No more printing of these cheap NWT Bibles.

  Now the publishers would be "forced" to use the new versions.

  When the only Bible you can get is the new one, it simplifies matters.

  And when the new Bible is introduced there'll be a lot of "encouragement"

  to donate what a real retail leather covered Bible would cost at a bookstore,

  so every publisher should own one and also place these new Bibles with every call.

  Then, the WTS hopes to make some good bucks on the ol' Scriptures once again.

  ---

  Have you seen one of these trial-basis Grey Bibles?
• 

  laverite

  The NWT is available on the jw.org website. I wonder if it's available in e-book format for Kindles, iPads, etc? Will there be a continuing need to publish physical Bibles especially if they lose money on them? They don't place much emphasis on the Bible anyway. It's all about the GB and the Watchtower's views on the Bible. Not that the NWT actually counts as a proper Bible...but still...
• 

  slimboyfat

  Don't think I've seen these Bibles you are talking about.
• 

  losingit

  I've seen the new Bible. An elder in my KH has one and brings it up to the platform all the time. I always disliked it when elders or others would show off their connection to someone in Bethel by prominently using their fancy Bible. I had the red one, my favorite. Geez, I hated that new one with the plastic think cover.looked so freaking cheap. I judt stuck to my old black bible or my red one. That thin one is just plain trash, an embarrassment for a Bible Society, smh
• 

  JakeM2012

  I have a half of a box of black and red "deluxe" NWT Bibles. I'd have to dig them out, but I think they are there.
• 

  Phizzy

  The fancy Bible you are talking about was around in my day, only some DO's and CO's seemed to have one then.

  I was told that it was produced commercially by a Bro. in the USA, as merely a binding exercise he was not fringing copyright etc, but he would provide one free for D.O's and C.O's.

  Are you saying for sure that the WT provided such, which presumably they had asked the Bro to provide , or had they in fact produced them themselves ?
• 

  oppostate

  The new NWT editions (the greys) with silver edging are straight from Bethel.

  If you've seen someone with one of these greys then that tells you they're well connected at Bethel.

  There are ... ehem... pictures of Guy Pierce with one of the greys at Bro Ferguson's Facebook page.

  nuf said about where you can get photo proof if you want to search for it.

  ---

  So... yeah, the plasticky editions turned out to cost cheaper to produce and were treated like the cheap binding issues they were, the publishers didn't donate enough to cover their cost in producing them. A lot of these are placed without much thought about requesting a donation.

  So they saved some money in producing them as compared to the cardboard hard cover with leather grain imprinted on paper, of course the one that really costs a lot to produce are the gold edged red/maroon and black pigskin leather ones, which are special request items.

  The leather on the greys is supple and smooth. The Bible itself is thicker since it includes the indexes which appear in the reference Bible. The text in these editions was the same as the one we can get now minus the [brackets].

  That's my recollection in having had some of these to thumb through.

  ---
• 

  Crazyguy

  I got a new bible just a few months ago, Its a Holman Christian Standard Bible, study edition. Ten times any bible the ORG has published.
• 

  BobFlanagan007

  I got a new bible just a few months ago, Its a Holman Christian Standard Bible, study edition. Ten times any bible the ORG has published.

  Still doesn't change the fact that the Bible's no more than an arbitrarily compiled collection of unattributed ancient mystical writings that was put together decades, in some cases hundreds and thousands of years, after the events described therein supposedly happened that's inspired by a long silent sky god.

  I don't understand how anyone who's been in "the Truth" can still have any time for such nonesense.
• 

  BackseatDevil

  There could be any number of reasons ... but i would be surprised if money was one of them. The bibles cost next to nothing to make, regardless of the materials. Donations that come in aren't divided by purpose. So unless on a congregation level there is an accounting as to what donation goes to what publication, there is no way of knowing if a publication is "profitable" or not.

  Now (to argue your side) if these bibles were a popular item and they were slightly more expensive to make... then after about 6 months or so there would be an evaluation of sorts. if no more donations are coming in then normal... then they would discontinue that product. So that's a possibility. Usually they would just phase it to a cheaper version or something slight. But honestly, their pass out publications cost nothing to produce.

  but to recall an item, that's something else. It could be a misprint or something legal. Hell, they could just want everyone to just have the same looking bible for "unity". LOL.