Simon Cox Blog: Why Amazon's Alexa Plays Ann Voskamp

Friday, 6 January 2017

Why Amazon's Alexa Plays Ann Voskamp

Smart devices now feature daily devotionals from evangelical favorites.

Ask Alexa, and it will be given to you.

Users can now summon the popular Amazon voice assistant for biblical inspiration, cueing audio clips from daily devotionals by top evangelical authors such as Ann Voskamp and Rick Warren.

In December, the company sold millions of its smart devices such as the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot for Christmas—nine times as many as the year before. The same month, Amazon added devotional reading as one of Alexa’s newest skills, developed in partnership with HarperCollins Christian Publishing.

Once the skill is installed, a person’s voice command prompts Alexa to play that day’s devotional clip: Alexa, ask Devotionals to read me today's devotion.

In addition to Voskamp and Warren, the devotionals come from Zondervan and Thomas Nelson authors such as Sarah Young, Lysa TerKeurst, Shauna Niequist, Judah Smith, Lee Strobel, Jefferson Bethke, and more than a dozen others so far.

Young’s Jesus Always and TerKeurst’s Uninvited were the top two bestselling Christian devotionals released this year, while Niequist’s Present Over Perfect ranked in the top 10, according to listings from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.

Alexa has played excerpts from earlier devos such as TerKeurst’s Made to Crave, Niequist’s Savor, and Voskamp’s breakout 2011 book, One Thousand Gifts. More classic titles, such as Corrie Ten Boom’s I Stand at the Door and Knock and L. B. Cowman’s Streams in the Desert, have also been featured.

“This is an unprecedented opportunity to gain new exposure and awareness around our authors’ great content, in short form, with a simple voice command,” said Sally Hofmann, a senior vice president at ...