I’m not too active on the forum but happened to see this thread get re-upped. Back in 2008, I created the iPhone app of The Urantia Book that is still available and which I continue to maintain. So I can give some maybe unique observations on dissemination from that experience. It’s ended up giving an inadvertent good view for the better part of a decade on the results of distribution of the book.
A few hundred thousand people have downloaded the book this way to date, mainly from day-by-day organic discovery and to a lesser extent from word-of-mouth. For most, downloading the app has been their first encounter with the book. I made it with the public domain English text at first but after seeing how well it did I got in touch with Urantia Foundation to introduce myself and see if they’d like their translations included. Before then I hadn’t talked with anyone else who had read the book or knew about it. I hadn’t heard the word “Urantia” spoken out loud actually. I’d been a reader on my own for about 10 years though. The board gave approval in the spring of 2009 and with their blessings I added their translations for Spanish, French, and Russian soon afterwards. Other languages were made available over time; the app is available in 13 languages these days.
Here are some observations and lessons learned:
1. People are definitely willing to try out the book, especially after they hear more about it to pique their curiosity. Here is how I pique their curiosity: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-urantia-book/id298474490?mt=8 . The book being free helps a great deal (the app is a free download). On the app store worldwide, about 125,000 people any given month will see the book appear somewhere in a search result list — this is the point where they would just see the app title (“The Urantia Book”), icon, and 2 screenshots — and about 4% of those people will tap to read the details about it. That’s not too unusual of a rate I don’t believe. But then about 50% who read more about it become interested enough to download it, which seems pretty high.
2. People abandon the book rapidly. There’s just no getting around that the book is a lot to digest and it’s easy for people who first encounter it to bounce off. Most reviews on the app store are positive since they’re from long term readers, but there are negative reviews from people who clearly are new, started at the Foreword, and bounced right off. Also, in this day and age, everyone’s focus is so fragmented in life. By 30 days out from download, only 1-2% still use the app according to Apple’s analytics. Other people (5x or 6x as many based on upgrade rates) still keep the app on their device but evidently use it rarely, if ever. These aren’t unusual retention and usage rates for apps. People download and discard pretty readily, and for those apps they do keep, people relegate a lot off to folders and side screens where the apps aren’t hardly used. Out of sight, out of mind. The Urantia Book app isn’t above average in retention, it’s just average.
3. The countries with the highest retention and usage rates are the countries that already have the most readers. A good study in contrasts is Russia vs. Colombia. Russia is the country with the second highest number of downloads, behind only the US. About 9x as many people have downloaded the book in Russia compared to Colombia. But almost the same number of people continue to use the app in each country on a monthly basis according to Apple’s analytics. People in Colombia basically have kept the app and continued to use it at 9x the rate of Russians. Russia was a country where I did particularly well in having the app appear in search results for search terms that were popular to a general audience. It reached a lot of people who were new to the book. But though they were quick to try it, it seems many were quick to abandon it. Colombia on the other hand already has more of a committed readership and an awareness of the book dating back to the Benetiz bestsellers. Just distributing the book is fine but it’s no panacea that substitutes for activities and service in real-life that builds relationships and long-term interest in the teachings face to face with other people.
4. Spikes in attention for the book are very ephemeral. I’ve never aimed to have them but it’s happened on occasion, and I’ve seen the effect on the downloads. It always is very quick to fade. Examples of spikes in attention over the years include when the book was a topic on the Coast to Coast AM radio show, and when it was mentioned by Norman Lear in an interview with Oprah. I see a blip in the downloads for a day or two and then it’s back to normal. Slow and steady seems to be how it’ll go. (I will say there’s been a strange and sustained increase in downloads in China in the past 6 months. In the past 5 weeks, there have been more downloads in China than any other country. I don’t know why.)
5. I’ve found it’s very important to experiment, try new things, keep track of what seems to work and doesn’t and make changes in approach. It’s all a big learning experience.
6. Build on what others have done and what is already available when it makes sense, but don’t hesitate to DIY. People in the Urantia community are happy to help (a caveat being that you can’t always rely on follow-through more than you would from anyone else) but what makes all the difference is to do the work yourself as much as you have to and not wait for others or expect anything from individuals or organizations.
7. Almost everything is still left to be done. To put the app in perspective, in the United States there are over 100,000,000 people with an iPhone or iPad, and the number of app downloads in the US on any given day is not infrequently in the single digits. Just this one avenue of dissemination is 99.999% unrealized potential and IMO significantly underutilized considering it’s distribution that gives the book with zero marginal costs limitlessly through thin air for free at the touch of a screen. Worldwide there is that much more unrealized potential, a billion or so active iOS devices.
8. Related to #7 — the amount that’s simple to do and not being done is more than you might think. There are very easy things anyone can help with that surprisingly few people do. For instance leaving reviews, such as on Amazon, on youtube videos, on Goodreads. For my project, there are three different mechanisms by which positive reviews on the App Store lead to increased downloads after certain threshholds are met. About 20 people leaving a review each year on the App Store in all likelihood would lead to hundreds of more people discovering The Urantia Book annually through this channel. If you’re reading this, have the app, and haven’t left a review on the App Store — you should! In the past couple years I’ve tried to highlight this particular shortcoming to readers since the benefit-to-effort ratio is potentially so good but there hasn’t been much follow-through (just a single person).
Much can be done steadily over time, day by day and bit by bit. I think a lot is about trying, doing, not being so concerned with any one result. A lot that I’ve tried out with this project hasn’t worked out as hoped but it’s taught me lessons. There’s still a lot more to learn and do.
