Are Missing Textbooks in the Logos Store a Case of an All or Nothing Situation?

School year has started again and I am stuck with deciding: Physical, Kindle, iBooks, etc. That is, for everything that is not in Logos OR stuck in PrePub. I figure it's just the hoops needed for books.

My problem: I want the least amount of textbooks in other formats, I want as much in Logos as possible, but the books I want are not always available. I would be willing to buy textbooks in the no value added FL Ebook Store if they were available, but are often not.

Here's my Suggestion/Request: FL Ebooks seems to be a quick and dirty text transfer into ebook without all the "Value Added." Would it be possible to fast-track books through FL Ebooks to get them in the FL Format without the "Value Added" aspect and charge publisher's asking price? THEN, push these Academic type textbooks (etc) into Logos PrePub for those that want to get the "Value Added"-ness to these resources. It could be that every FL Ebook purchase of the text can be added to the PrePub count to help it get published with the Logos Special Sauce and early adopters get the Logos-Value-Added resource upgraded for free, similar to how operates now. Or Ebook purchasers could have a Dynamic PrePub price for the upgrade.

Right now, it feels like an All-or-Nothing system with some potential Logos Resources. The problem could be that I may not understand the publishing and licensing rules. My assumption is that licensing from publishers is different and the Value-Added portion adds publishing and man-power costs for FL modifying the resource with its' tagging. That's where the books become unavailable OR stuck in PrePub (waiting to fund the manpower to add that Value.) Whereas FL Ebook licensing & production is less tedious because it's a simpler file transfer into the FL Ebook System.

I would much rather have a textbook in Logos now for my class, even without the extra tagging at an Ebook price and wait to have that value-added once enough people buy and fund it OR wait to see if enough people would be willing to upgrade the book to a Logos.

I'm open to correction if I misunderstand the way the system works. I just want more books available in Logos.

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Comments

Matt Hamrick

I have been out of college for over five years and now I have most of my college textbooks in the software, but during college I had to buy print books because they were not yet available in Logos. I plan on attending seminary in my future, but I expect them to be using current textbooks and some will already be in the system while others I will need to buy the print and later it will probably make it into Logos Bible Software. My experience is textbooks are 3 to 5 years late. And that late is relative because I could have waited longer to attend college and all my books would have been in my bible software. The resources in my bible software do not determine when I attend school at any given time. I would love to have all my textbooks in the bible software, but I don't see that has practical.

Richard Villanueva

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/993057#Comment_993057

I wouldn’t suggest anyone delay their education by waiting for the Textbooks to be produced in their preferred format. That would be terribly impractical! Right now I am buying my books digitally the via Logos and Kindle, in Print through amazon, and have bought one or two through audible (helpful when I was Commuting.)

I guess that is my point. If we accept your numbers that recent books have a three-five year production cycle (I’m not sure that’s the case but it’s a start) then Logos could be loosing sales by the long wait for getting books live and we loose out by not having access in the software.

IF the holdup is the length of time it takes to produce a fully tagged resource. And IF the holdup is the added labor expense in creating a fully tagged resource. It may be more helpful to bypass fully tagging a monograph and distributing it through the FL Ebook site. It would be just as useful as me buying it on Kindle. Just in Logos. Then, if the sales warrant an upgrade to a fully tagged resource, it would be done after the fact of the resource going live in the store.