Book: A Futurist's Manifesto

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The Engagement Economy (Bobby Gruenewald, YouVersion)

Bobby Gruenewald serves as Pastor, Innovation Leader at LifeChurch.tv and as the co-founder of the YouVersion Bible App. Bobby has been featured in the Washington Post, TechCrunch, CNN, CBS, NPR, and was listed by Fast Company as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2011. You can find him on Twitter at @bobbygwald. YouVersion and the Bible App were created by LifeChurch.tv. They have been installed on tens of millions of devices, and the YouVersion community has spent tens of billions of minutes engaging in Scripture, in more than 100 different languages.

Content isn’t king anymore. It has been dethroned by engagement.

Whether it’s a quarter-life crisis, a mid-life crisis, or an end-of-life crisis, the publishing world is struggling to find itself. For hundreds of years, it was enough to offer the best content: masterfully written text, helpful or beautiful illustrations, compelling titles, and eye-catching covers.

But then the world moved online. New channels for content emerged, and the global community began not only consuming it, but also contributing to it. It wasn’t enough to hear what others had to say or see what they produced. We wanted to interact with it, adding our unique voice.

Meanwhile, printed matter continued to follow the well-worn path of its predecessors. Once the sale was made, there was little thought given to influencing how much or how often people engaged with the content. It ...