NEW: Books Section in Factbook

We’ve brought together the Library and Bookstore sections together into a single, streamlined Books section in Factbook. With just a quick tab switch, you can move between the books you already own and new titles waiting to be discovered.

Finding what you need is easier than ever. Sort by author, type, or language, and explore curated book views inside Factbook lenses. Everything is organized around your study so the right resources are always close at hand.

This section replaces the previous Bookstore and Library sections, and is now available on beta in the desktop app and available now on web. Give it a try today!

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Comments

Aaron Hamilton

We’ve brought together the Library and Bookstore sections together into a single, streamlined Books section in Factbook. With just a quick tab switch, you can move between the books you already own and new titles waiting to be discovered.

I like this. Well done! However, I would like to point to a serious flaw in its implementation. When opening Books, Store appears before Your Library, meaning I have to make the extra step of clicking out of the store to see the content I have already purchased. This should not be the default. Having the Store option present is great. But it should not stand between me and the books I have already purchased. I don't even know what I may need to purchase until I first have an overview of what I own.

If Store has been intentionally placed before Your Library, please explain how this is in the user's best interest.

Edit: With the discover lens, I'm not sure having a Store tab is necessary at all. I can see the usefulness of the Discover lens, as it breaks down available resources by category in a helpful manner. But the Store tab in the Books section is entirely redundant.

DMB

Inch by inch … Logos a store app.

Morgan

Even as a subscriber I can't escape ads? I don't want to see the store prioritized over my books and I don't like the 'discover' section either.

I hate this. Every ad disengages me from buying more. Every time I see the store shoved in front of my face in the desktop app I am less likely to buy from you. You are actively turning me away from your product with these ads.

NetworkGeek

Major thumbs down on this! The default should be our own library! Why this continual push-push-push on sales and selling? Please stop it, stop looking for ways to sneak in additional promotions. Isn't the new Discover lens enough exposure to the new sales opportunities?

It's such a shame that while precious development time is spent on things like "Hey, maybe we can redo the Books section to get more eyes on our store", yet users have to VOTE on enhancements that so many ask for but are not implemented? Who voted for this? Why are users subjected to voting for changes but Logos has free hand to indent promotions? (Why I have not voted for anything in many years, it is a total farce of a policy).

You're starting to lose me as a customer. I spend a lot of money purchasing books every year, is my only practical recourse to stop purchasing books in protest of this mindset?

In this case please make the default our library!! 😡

NichtnurBibelleser

I don't know if the Android App (Logos 45.0.9) has already the aforementioned change, but I like to point out two flaws:

Screenshot_20250904-200821.png

To me "Catholic Church" and "Katholisch" should be only one Category. And my top priority Dogmatic, the one by Müller, doesn't appear at all. I expect this one to appear first.

Kiyah

I would like to see my own library first. Not the store first. The beta that just installed (45 Beta 2) doesn't remember your last selection. So when I select 'Library' and then close and reopen the factbook, it defaults back to the store.

Please, please, please. We keep giving Logos the same feedback over and over and it's like you're not listening. We want to see and prioritize the books that we already own FIRST. And then move to resources in the store if necessary. Please consider changing the order of the lenses to put our Library first. Having the Store first doesn't even make logical sense. Why would I go to the store first when I have over 10k resources already in my library? Even if I'm a newer customer I probably just bought a library to get started. This change would actually be convenient if you would just switch the order. Since the order is backwards it's actually inconvenient.

We have given Logos repeated feedback that we don't want to store being pushed in our face. At what point does that become a part of your basic design principles?

Ryland Brown

I find the store in the books section of the library redundant with the new discover section in the Factbook. I'll echo what others have said that it shouldn't open to the store before the library in the library section. If it's determined to offer books to purchase in the Factbook, can the discover section replace the store in the books section of the Library lense?

Aaron Hamilton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1378955#Comment_1378955

Logos needs to remain a study-first application, not a store-first application. I'm confused by how something like this made it all the way to beta.

Jack Caviness

If you had left the store option under Discover, this would have been a wonderful enhancement, but you lost many points by putting Store ahead of owned resources.

Jerry Bush

I have been an evangelist for Logos for nearly 25 years, to the point that sometimes I stood up for them when sometimes internally I questioned it.

This is a decent idea, but to put the store first is… I have so many things to say about it and they are all bad. There is no spin marketing can put on this to make it OK.

This is insulting, especially to subscribers (which I am one and support).

Please Logos, keep the idea but reverse the order… our owned books first then the store. I'm starting to feel trapped in some ways. I have thousands of dollars I've spent over the years.

Please… no. Logos, you are starting to lose me with stuff like this.

PLEASE listen to this thread and others.

Mark Barnes (Logos)

We're sorry.

We’ve heard you loud and clear.

When considering this change, we over-optimized for users with smaller libraries by prioritizing the Store, which in turn hindered those of you who already own substantial libraries and wish to view your existing books. That decision went against our long-established principle of putting the content you own before the content you don't own.* We were wrong to do that differently in this section.

We’re reverting the change so that your Library will once again be the default in the Books section. The Store tab will remain available, but your books will always come first.

Our aim is for Logos to remain a study-first application, and we’re grateful that you spoke up to keep us on course. The corrected behavior will be in a server-side update, so you won't need to download a new version to see the change.

* In search, we boost some owned content above higher-ranking unowned content, but we don't do that for ALL owned content, because some of it is only very slightly relevant, and boosting it doesn't really help anyone. And you can easily switch to a Books search if you want to eliminate all unowned content.

Graham Criddle

Thanks @Mark Barnes (Logos) - great response.

Graham

Morgan

Thank you @Mark Barnes (Logos) . The willingness to listen here is greatly appreciated.

Fabian Jovanovic

Thanks @Mark Barnes (Logos)

NetworkGeek

Thank you @Mark Barnes (Logos) for listening, and especially for affirming this statement again, much needed —

"…our long-established principle of putting the content you own before the content you don't own."

Mark Barnes (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1378971#Comment_1378971

Looks like this is a problem in English, too. It's probably a problem with the book metadata. I'll get it looked into.

Steven MacDonald

Thanks @Mark Barnes (Logos) for the communication. This change will make this a nice feature.

Simon’s Brother

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1379081#Comment_1379081

Mark thank you for conceding this change, however I don't think Faithlife have truly listened to the room. They haven't gone far enough. You still have incorporated two store fronts into the Factbook. Two stores, seriously, there is no need for two. Factbook is being turned into a glorified sales catalogue. That is a sign of a company that is prioritizing opportunities to attempt to upsell to customers over dealing with existing issues users have raised and looking at suggestion's users would like implemented to optimize the software to enhance their bible study and sermon preparation.

The discover tab is fine for those that want to use it, who genuinely want to see what else might be available on the given topic, but you don't need to replicate that functionality in the library lense. Book in the store are not in m library, so I am not expecting to see them there and have no need to see them there. It does not enhance my study in any way - the discover tab is there for the occasion I might feel I am lacking in a resource.

To say you were optimizing for users with small libraries by prioritizing the store tab would be laughable if it was not so sad and clear indication that if Faithlife is taking the time to come up with that sort of spin to justify trying to incorporate more storefronts into the software then truly inch by inch they are trying to turn Logos Bible Software into Logos Bible Storefront.

Users who have a small library, don't have a small library because they don't know there are other books out there to purchase and lack the ability to use the discover tab, like a user with a medium or large, or enormous sized library, to find out what those books might be.

The discover lens, on its own where one doesn't have to use it is ok but not what users have been asking for. Faithlife would have been better dealing with what users have been asking for and avoided this negative response by putting recourse into optimizing the website storefront which has had complaints in the forums about the faceted browsing experience.

Soon Microsoft will stop supporting Windows 10 and along with that Faithlife will stop supporting users on Windows 10. For some of those users a new computer may not be the answer right now. Before that happens Faithlife has prioritized getting a second storefront in Factbook to those users over other improvements that might have optimized their experience of the software before Faithlife drops supporting them with updates that actually matter to them.

When is Faithlife going to get the message, we don't want and don't see more storefronts in the application as enhancements or optimisations of our bible study and sermon preparation experience. If you are not actually going to hear this message and turn your attention to actual user suggestions, then you may as well take down the suggestions sites for users to put forward their ideas because they are nothing more than window dressing as many users have already come to this conclusion about them.

DMB

"To say you were optimizing for users with small libraries by prioritizing the store tab would be laughable if it was not so sad and clear indication that if Faithlife is taking the time to come up with that sort of spin to justify trying to incorporate more storefronts into the software then truly inch by inch they are trying to turn Logos Bible Software into Logos Bible Storefront."

Mark is good at it. Smiling.

Mark Barnes (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1379106#Comment_1379106

I don't agree that we've added to storefronts to Factbook, although I understand why it might feel like that. Let me explain our thinking.

For a long time, Factbook has had two similar sections. One of them was called Books from Your Library, and the other was called Bookstore. The work that we recently did merged those two sections together into a single section called Books, which a toggle between Your Library and Store. In that work, we haven't added any additional "storefront" to Logos, we've just merged two existing sections together. Indeed, with the subsequent follow-up we did, the Store is now less prominent than the old Bookstore because it's hidden behind a click.

We made another important change as we merged these sections together. Previously, items would be shown in the bookstore if they had any relevant content at all, even if that content only took up a few pages. I'm looking at the Factbook page for Marriage in the old version of Factbook, and the first resource I'm offered is volume 18 of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, which mentions marriage a few times, but really has nothing relevant to offer. But in the new sections, the first book I'm offered is The Meaning of Marriage, and the second is God, Marriage, and Family. So it shows fewer books, but the books are much more relevant and useful.

The Discover lens has a different purpose. Its job is to help you find new content in all the other sections: journals, commentaries, dictionaries, etc. Again, showing that content isn't new. It's been in Factbook for several months. But it could be hard to find, precisely because we always placed unowned content below owned content. For example, imagine I was about to start a mini-series on Obadiah and wanted to know if Logos offered any commentaries I didn't own. On my personal Logos account, I'd have to click More five times, and scroll past literally hundreds of commentaries just to answer the question, "Does Logos have any great commentaries I don't already have?". The Discover lens is designed to solve that problem by temporarily hiding the commentaries I do own, so I can see the ones I don't. The Discover lens is never turned on by default, and we put it right at the far end of the tab so it never stops you from getting to the other lenses you need. (You might think that someone who has to click five times to see books doesn't need any more, but as I was writing this post, I did actually buy the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary volume on Obadiah that came out last year and I had missed.)

Anyway, the commentaries, dictionaries, and journals I discover on this lens probably won't appear in the Store section of Books, because the Store section shows books where most or all of the book is on the topic. So if there's a dictionary you don't own that has one entry on Obadiah it won't show up in the store, but it will show up in the Dictionaries section with the Discover lens selected.

We don't expect you (or anyone) to use the Discover lens or the Store tab of Books very often. But when you want to see everything we have on a topic, and the filters at logos.com aren't detailed enough for you, then we hope you'll find it useful.

Fabian Jovanovic

@Mark Barnes (Logos) I really like to see the content which I could buy in Factbook. It gives me the opportunity to add good books with the information I need to my library. But putting the content which I already have in my library to show up first was the right move.