Trevor McKendrick did a little research and realized that, in all of the iTunes Store’s vast app selection, one thing it lacked was a Spanish translation of the Bible. For only $500, he put one together, and today, he makes something like $100,000 a year on it. The one catch is, McKendrick is an atheist. He says it’s started to prick his conscience that he’s selling something he doesn’t actually believe in, as he told the StartUp Podcast …
What if you sold Harry Potter books or Lord of the Rings books, but you told people it was real? And you told people if they would just learn how to write spells themselves, they could heal their children? And if you sold that as a real thing? I would feel terrible about that. But that’s really the situation I am in selling the Bible. I am selling this thing I truly believe is fiction, but other people are trying to use [it] and mold their lives to fix large and small problems.
It’s a fair point for his perspective, although he’s not necessarily being hyper sensitive to the billions of people around the world who might find it offensive to have the Bible compared to fantasy novels. In any case, he’s not feeling contrite enough about it to let go of his app, called La Biblia Reina Valera (and at $100,000 a year, who can blame him?) In any case, whether or not McKendrick believes in it, his app is definitely doing a lot of people a lot of good …
