From today’s news release:
Crossway is pleased to announce that the ESV Study Bible is now the first study Bible available on Amazon’s Kindle. Created to help people understand the Bible in a deeper way, the ESV Study Bible has all 2,752 pages of ESV Study Bible notes, resources, and features conveniently accessible anywhere, anytime on the 10.2-ounce Kindle device.
Equivalent to more than 20 volumes of Bible text and study resources, the Kindle edition of the ESV Study Bible can currently be purchased in the Kindle store for $9.99 (Introductory SRP of $14.99 until June 1st).
I got this yesterday morning on the way to church to go with the Kindle my wife got me for Easter. I found that the bible behave pretty sluggishly. Every other book I’ve looked at on the kindle (so far only 4 books) behave pretty quickly (pages turn within a second), but this one is very slow to respond. perhaps it’s the large file size. Sometimes, it doesn’t respond at all and I have to back out to the home page and back into the bible to see the new page.
At this point, I’d say it’s almost unusable in my experience (albeit after only a day of trying to use it). I’m hoping that this can be worked out because I’m very excited about having this with me all the time and not having to carry around the hardback.
I’m hoping it’s just a bug and not a hardware limitation for files of this size.
Comment by george — April 13, 2009 @ 10:39 am
Does Kindle2 allow for searching words and phrases in specific books or grouping books in
categories and then searching those categories? Kindle1 didn’t.
Comment by Robert Barnes — April 13, 2009 @ 11:13 am
How do you suggest searching for specific passages within this? Go to TOC > Book > Chapter and then page through to selected verse?
Comment by Travis — April 13, 2009 @ 11:15 am
Also, would be great to publish a reading companion for reading through the year! Could be by month/day and have links to specified books and chapters!
Comment by Travis — April 13, 2009 @ 11:16 am
Following up.
I did a factory restore (Home > Menu > Settings > Menu > Reset to Factory Defaults) of the device and then re-downloaded the ESV Study Bible and it appears to be working properly now. Behaving just like all other books. Perhaps I got a corrupted download or something. I was driving while it was downloading, perhaps got interrupted at one point as I drove between cell towers.
Awesome.
Comment by george — April 13, 2009 @ 11:36 am
..and what about us Sony Reader folks?
We need this too
Comment by Scott Cheatham — April 13, 2009 @ 12:17 pm
Will there be an ESV Study Bible including the deutero-canonical books in the future? I am holding out for such a volume before purchasing an ESV Study Bible, although I am using an ESV regular Bible right now.
Also, there is a brand new movement afoot within the conservative Anglican churches (Reformed Episcopal, etc.) to produce a totally new (yet Biblically accurate like the 1928) Book of Common Prayer using the ESV translation. Father Keith Acker of Forward in Faith North America and rector of Alpine Anglican Church of the Blessed Trinity, a Reformed Episcopal parish in the San Diego area, has written an article calling for the conservative branch of the American Anglican Church to support using the ESV as the basis for such an important project. The 1928 Prayer Book in use by conservatives uses the Great Bible of 1540 as their basis which is a beautiful translation but difficult for the modern American to comprehend. The Anglican Church recognizes the importance of the deutero-canonical books for historicity only; they do not take doctrine from it unless it is also supported in the 66 canonical books. Thought you’d like to know.
Comment by Susanne Barrett — April 13, 2009 @ 12:39 pm
I too am interested in getting the ESV for the Sony 505 reader.
Comment by Kelley Jernigan — April 13, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
Regarding the ESVSB on other digital platforms…we’re working on it and will have news shortly!
James
Crossway
Comment by James — April 13, 2009 @ 3:39 pm
Can anyone tell me how hard it is to turn to specific references, as in when preaching and using the Kindle as the “Bible” of choices? I do not own a Kindle, so have no frame of reference.
Comment by Steven — April 14, 2009 @ 8:25 am
I use the Kindle Reader app for iPhone and bought the ESV Study Bible Kindle edition today. It works well. I was a bit disappointed that the one resource in the print Study Bible it didn’t have was the Reading Plan. The only other negative is that on the iPhone clicking the little dagger symbol to go to the appropriate verse note is a bit hard. That symbol is tiny on the iPhone!
Other than those minor annoyances, it’s really nice to have the full ESV Study Bible on my iPhone. I love my printed ESV Study Bible but it’s a bit heavy to lug around. The ESV Study Bible Kindle version on iPhone is speedy and responsive for such a large e-book.
Comment by Scott D — April 14, 2009 @ 5:59 pm
As yet, we do not have Kindle in the UK, and the Sony Reader is selling slowly. It seems to me any Kindle Bible would only be advantageous if it offered good search facilities, such as is available in most Bible software. Speed and the ability to add notes and bookmarks would also be required before I thought of buying a digital reader like SOny or Kindle when it appears here. Also, as someone else has said, links to one or more daily reading plans would be a help too.
Comment by David Dewey (UK) — April 15, 2009 @ 4:01 am
So, is there any chance of the ESV Study Bible for the Sony ereader?
Comment by Stephen — April 20, 2009 @ 9:06 am
I would greatly appreciate it if you would consider the iPhone Kindle App in your layout. For us iPhone Kindle App users, there is (presently) no navigation device that skips from link to link – instead we touch the link directly. Unfortunately, the links the notes are very, very difficult to touch – triply so when multiple links are placed in immediate succession. (eg. Eph 4:1).
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks.
Comment by Tollie Williams — April 26, 2009 @ 1:05 am
What a wonderful way to spread the word through the next generations! Kids won’t read unless it is in digital form…
Comment by Ares — May 4, 2009 @ 8:10 pm
This is really Great way to spread the holy word through next generation. I should really congratulate you for this. I will pray to God may your efforts enlighten the lives of our new generations
Smantha
Comment by Samantha — May 9, 2009 @ 12:46 am
I too am interested in getting the ESV for the Sony 505 reader.
Comment by PB — May 27, 2009 @ 2:58 am
I would love to write and say what a great job you did on this, as you have put a lot of work into it.
Comment by Kindle Accessories — June 2, 2009 @ 6:19 pm
Add me to the list of Sony 505 owners who would love this for my Reader. James, any idea when this might become a plausible reality?
Comment by Chris — June 9, 2009 @ 12:46 pm
That was quick. ESV Study Bible now available in ePub. Downloaded to the Sony Reader (505) this morning, very nice, indeed.
Comment by Chris — June 10, 2009 @ 9:11 am
I do find that, compared to small books, there is more lag when accessing the study bible on Kindle in both page turns and moving between links. Does anyone else have that problem? Is that just because the study bible file is much bigger?
Comment by Peter — July 6, 2009 @ 7:28 pm
To dear publisher:
I personally and many of my friends enjoy using a Bible Software: “eSword”.
I hope and pray that you will have a version of the “ESV Study Bible” available for that software platform. If you do that, I am fairly sure that it will help thousands of people enjoy “ESV Study Bible” even more?
eSword in my opinion is ten times more convenient to do Bible study/research than “Kindle”!!
Comment by Frank H — September 22, 2009 @ 4:40 am
I cannot find any instructions about how to use the daggers etc. on the Kindle. Are there any directions about how to use the ESV Study Bible on the Kindle.
As with all the other Bible translations on the Kindle, this one is clunky and slow for me.
Comment by Richard — October 13, 2009 @ 10:06 am
How much is the Kindle new?
Comment by dohardthings — November 24, 2009 @ 10:15 pm
I heard the new Kindle DX will support .PDFs too, though I’m not sure if the Bible is available as a PDF or not. Surely it must be?
Comment by ebooks — January 21, 2010 @ 6:35 am
After searching BING I found your site about ESV Bible Blog » First Study Bible Available on Kindle and another one called http://www.kindle-sales.com . I think both are good and I will be coming back to you and them in the future. Thanks
Comment by kindle books — April 14, 2010 @ 1:38 pm
Sorry to post on an old blog entry, but I just purchased the ESV Study Bible for the Kindle app on my iPad. I was disappointed to see that the illustrations were in black and white only as many of the Kindle illustrations show up in color on the iPad. I hope that Crossway will consider updating the ESV Study Bible for the Kindle with the full color illustrations.
Thanks.
Comment by R. Mansfield — April 27, 2010 @ 2:44 pm
I have a new Android phone (Motorola Milestone) and downloaded the Kindle reader for it and a sample version of the ESV Study Bible with the intention of purchasing it. Unfortunately, the Bible was readable for a bit, but now aborts with this message “The application Kindle (process com.amazon.kindle) has stopped unexpectedly.” The Kindle reader for Android phones is fairly new so bugs can be expected, but I thought you would like to know. I would expect the ESV Study bible to be a good stress test for the program.
Comment by H.Slofstra — July 11, 2010 @ 8:03 am
where is the concordance?? I’ve been searching for days. I don’t think the kindle version has one.
Comment by chuck — September 1, 2010 @ 4:57 pm
I have the Kindle and physical versions of the ESV Study Bible and think it’s great…the Kindle version could use a quicker way to navigate though. I believe some Kindle Bibles have something called Direct Verse Jump where you can type “Jn 3:16″ or some such and go straight to a verse, but if this one has it I haven’t figured out how to use it yet. Is there any chance of an update that can do that?
Comment by Clay B — January 18, 2011 @ 11:32 am
Since the ESV is by far my favorite study Bible, it is SO awesome to have this fantastic tool available on the Kindle. Navigation to the study notes and footnotes is easy, and the resource index is outstanding. I have experienced no problems with speed or stability.
However, the cross references, the ESV Study Bible reading plan and the concordance of the printed version are NOT part of the Kindle ESV Study Bible. In my opinion, these are all important resources that would really make the product more complete as a study tool. While you can search for word occurrences on the Kindle without a concordance, it’s not really the same since a good concordance (such as the one in the ESV study Bible) provides rapid access to the most relevant verses. The importance of a cross reference system cannot be understated, so I don’t know why the ESV reference system has not been provided in the Kindle version. In my opinion, it’s not really a study Bible without one.
Inclusion of the ESV Study Bible reading plan would be most welcome, and it would be even better if you could provide all of the plans listed on the ESV site. As far as I can tell, these are the only three resources missing from the Kindle version that the printed version has. Direct Verse Jump (like what we have in Logos) would also be very helpful.
Any chance that we can get a Kindle update with some or all of these capabilities added?
Comment by Joe K — February 18, 2011 @ 11:41 pm