These are some best practices to follow when using the Holy Bible in your Christian nonfiction book.
For a practicing Christian, the Christian Bible is a lifeline. When you are called to write words to advance God’s kingdom, the Bible serves as not only a book of instruction for living, but it also becomes a reference source. There are best practices to follow when referencing this special book in your work of nonfiction to ensure your manuscript is accepted and published (by a publishing house). This article will share information about how to incorporate the Bible into your writing.
How to Reference the Bible in Your Nonfiction Book
Though the Bible is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16), we know that God used human hands to pen each line found in the book. The first thing to know about referencing the Bible in a work of nonfiction is that neither God or the various writers of the books of the Bible are listed as authors. This eliminates the need to include the Bible on a reference list in your own book (however, there is something you need to include in on your copyright page; we’ll discuss this later). In any event, you want to follow these guidelines:
Avoid making extensive changes to the Scriptures
Believers consider the Bible the literal Word of God and believe it should not be changed. From a publishing standpoint, the Bible is considered a copyrighted text that should not be changed.
Changes to Scriptures include italicizing words for emphasis, removing words, or adding words for clarity. In some works of nonfiction it is common to see certain words in Scriptures italicized for emphasis with a note specifying that the emphasis is that of the author’s; this is the widely accepted best practice. When done in taste (read: sparingly), it’s okay to do this, but too many changes may cause flags at the editing or publishing stages. Additionally, you should not italicize entire Bible verses unless they make up the epigraph, the special quote at the beginning of a chapter.
Check the permissions guidelines for the translation used
Quoting the Bible is not a free-for-all. What I mean by that is that you cannot quote the entire Bible or even most of it in your nonfiction book. Due to copyright rules, you will want to check the publisher’s guidelines for acceptable usage based on your Bible translation of choice. Most publishers allow for up to 500 single verses or a certain percentage of an entire book, so be sure to research this information.
Here are the permissions pages for a few commonly used Bible translations:
New International Version & Amplified Bible
Attribute the Bible version
Connected to ensuring you follow the permission guidelines of your selected Bible translation, any author using the Bible in their book should also attribute the version of the Bible used. If you are using one version of the Bible, you may be able to get away with adding a sentence or two about that specific Bible translation in your introduction as long as you also have copyright information on your copyright page. If you’re an author who likes to cross-reference between several Bible versions, you will need to make sure you properly cite the translation either before or after the verse used. This limits reader confusion and covers you from any issues of passing off words as your own.
Keep your style consistent
However you decide to approach including the Bible in your nonfiction Christian book, ensure this is consistent each and every time. An editor can help you with this.
A Note About the Copyright Page
This has been alluded to above several times because it is important: When using any Bible translation, you must include a note on the copyright page in your book regarding the publisher of the Bible. The links to the above translations include the publishers’ preferred language regarding this. You can simply copy and paste.
Using the Bible in your Christian nonfiction book need not be difficult. Simply follow the steps above to ensure your work is up to par with industry expectations. Happy writing!
Featured photo by Rachel Strong on Unsplash