Pencil Bible 2.0

Hia folks 👋🏻

Sorry for not updating in May/June but it has been slightly busy on my side (among other things) 😅.

How’s everyone doing? Great I hope. Let’s get started on the latest PB news 💪.

Good News

We are slowly moving towards Version 2.0. What does this mean? Well, faster speeds (opening the app, selecting a bookmark & chapter, etc.), better drawing tools, better cloud syncing so notes won’t get lost, and some design refinements. Version 3.0 would be a complete redesign I think.

Translations

We are busy working with HarperCollins (HC) to get more Bible translations 🥳 (Latest: I just got the contract. Just need to iron out the details).

HC are the publishers of the NIV, NIrV, NKJV, NET, and ICB Bible translations. It’s taking time to get everything the way they wanted it to be. We first had to update the security of Pencil Bible at their request as it apparently was too easy to extract the text from the app to use illegally (if someone wanted to).

Our developers quickly came up with a solution that involves implementing encryption on every Bible translation that uses a unique key to unlock it. HarperCollins is happy now.

Another snag in the system though. The NIV for the UK & Europe markets have a different publishing house. So now I have to get permission from them as well if you wanted to use these translations in Europe or the UK 🤷🏼‍♂️

I have also been in contact with Broadstreet publishing on getting the Passion Translation (a personal favorite of mine) and Tyndale for the NLT & The Message. We will have that shortly as well I hope.

Another translation I will start pursuing is the CSB translation.

I think then we have 90% of the reader base covered.

SKIA!

The most requested feature for PB is for the iPad to know when it is the Apple Pencil touching the surface, your palm, or your finger.

Thanks to SKIA for React Native (a project by Shopify) we can finally implement it 🤩

SKIA also comes with drawing tools and other cool features which means we don’t have to build it from scratch 🦖

This is amazing and saves me $100k in developer fees and months of time.

Pricing

Version 2.0 would also have better pricing 💸.

The monthly and annual costs will be much lower and there will be a lifetime option as well.

See my new designs:

My reasoning for this is complicated and based on feeling, what other apps are charging and the value Pencil Bible offers. It still is a thumb suck though. In pricing these types of software there is no easy answer.

Bad News

The elephant in the room (saving bugs)

There seems to be an issue with saving and recalling annotations. I thought I noticed something while testing, but couldn’t put my finger on it (pun intended).

After a lot of testing, we found out that when the size (amount of memory) the total annotations of a Bible takes up exceeds a certain amount the app loses the data. That sucks and took the wind out of my sails. I wanted to implement SKIA and now we have to deal with these new bugs.

After a week of poking holes in the database, we decided to re-write the whole architecture of Pencil Bible and the way it handles data.

It’s actually a good thing because we are getting the foundation ready to handle more users, data, and features. Already the speed is 20 times faster (I've been testing the new version) and soon cloud syncing and saving will be good to go as well. The app will sync in the background every 30 seconds to make sure your data is always safely stored inside the holy cloud (kidding).

Unfortunately, I noticed another issue during this whole process. If you make a lot of annotations on one chapter it becomes impossible to write as the app can’t handle processing all the annotations on that specific page. Our developers are trying to find the fix for this as well (fix found at time of writing).

Concluding notes

A million little things they say 😅 Well, my perfectionistic and impatient nature is struggling, but I know it’s part of the process. We will get this right.

Prayers are always appreciated 🙏.

We want to make the best Bible app ever.

That’s it for now. Thanks for all the support!

Kind regards

Erin

P.S. Please go give Pencil Bible 5 stars on the Apple Store. This helps distribution a lot. A few folks give 1 or 2-star reviews over petty things and I take it personally 😉