Logos Strategies for Community Pricing

Bruce Dunning

I do not understand Logos' strategy for setting the lowest price for Community Pricing. I am a huge supporter of Community Pricing and bid on almost every work that is offered, being successful on most. I don't understand why Logos often seems to introduce a resource at a higher price and then drop in a few days later. For instance, this just happened again with the works of Cicero. It was introduced with the lowest price being $55 (which I thought was too high right from the start) and then it was lowered lowered to $25 a few days later. May people have already bid on it or got scared off and won't go back to visit it again. From my perspective it should have been set at that price from the start.

http://www.logos.com/product/30402/select-works-of-cicero

David Wilson

"What if" the first "price" you saw were what the first individual actually bid as a community price because that is what they were willing to pay ?

If you get there very early in the "game" the "price" is going to tend to follow whatever you bid.  I have found this myself (must be in the "right" time zone with respect to posting times) that I have been able to bid several increments below the going "price" and have my bid immediately go Green and become the new peak.  That can only happen if it is very early in the "game".  Since Community Pricing was first introduced there have always been some early birds who bid on the strategy that if you want it bid as high as possible as that way it will get into production fastest and you can always guarantee the price will come down before it goes into production.  Not my strategy, but quite a popular one among those who want the resource "sooner" rather than waiting for a majority of "perhaps maybe" low bidders to get on-board a couple of years later.  For some people the strategy is to get it as soon as they can, rather than to get it for less than the lowest currently indicated minimum possible bid.  But there are hundreds of bidders out that and there are dozens of individual strategies.  Some titles languish for years, stalled because early bidders set the "price" far too low, such that there may never be enough interest to get the set into production.  How does that make someone feel if they really really need that title to use as a reference for something they are working on ?  The only strategy that will consistently work is the one most people do not use, bid as much as you are willing to pay for the resource.  If people only bid because they think the current peak would be a bargain then there is a significant risk the peak will sit there looking pretty for the rest of the decade at 30% or less of the production cost. Check out some of the resources at the BOTTOM of the PROGRESS sort and see if you think these are held up by peaks where too many early bidders bid at the low end hoping for a significant bargain (per the definition of a bargain being much LESS than you were willing to pay).  We seem stuck with strategies where the maximum price we want to pay is $20 or so whether this is a 5 volume set or a 50 volume set or a 150 volume set that we might like to grace our collections.  We have even seen several recent cases where significant numbers of bidders bale out after the title has crossed the line, such that all the potentially multiple peaks fall back below the line. Great for those who are in the "maybe if" category, but devastating for those who gave up other options and need the resource for their degree project.  How about we go back to the original concept and bid the maximum you are willing to pay. That way you will NEVER miss out on something you really wanted and in almost all cases you can expect to have others climb on board (AFTER it crosses the 100% line) to bring the price down much lower than you expected to have to pay. It felt like an experiment last week when they left three titles up for that extra week. Well one of them came down eventually getting what looked like the three extra bids it seems to need.  But the amount of extra "action" on these three titles does not hold out much hope for lobbying to get an extra week for everything.  Those wanting it sooner rather than cheaper loose out if they have to wait extra time after it crosses the finish line.  And extending the deadline does not always have much of a chance of dropping the price, so the only ones who win are those whose strategy is to DELAY it going into production so they can pay off their credit cards from previous purchases.  Lots of strategies out there, not all of them involve getting the price as low as it can be forced no matter how long it takes.  But that does seem to be the strategy quite a few bidders use.  Hopefully they use what the get rather than just "collect" it (some of them are unexpected gems, many more are expected gems).....