Logos needs better sales (Suggestion)

I was thinking when browsing other resources for Logos that the good stuff rarely goes on sale. I mean a good sale. Not a $1000 digital commentary series is marked off a few hundred. To me that's a shoulder shrug and a "meh".

You see this is all digital material. I've been comparing prices and sometimes Logos resourses are higher than things found at Christian book or other Christian stores. Yet these aren't physical copies. There is no printing press. I have a hard time justifying the price when it's an infinite digital resource.

Today I was reminded on how digital sales are done right. A lot of you may not be familiar with a program called Steam. Basically you create an account and buy digital games. It gained a lot of steam (pun intended) in the PC gaming community. One of that reason is their annual sales. Big name games are full price typically but at certain times of the year (summer being one of them) games receive a steep discount.

http://store.steampowered.com/ Here is a link for reference. We aren't talking a mere few percent off. Games go 50% to 90% off. This allows those on a stricter budget access to more materials.

Why can't Logos do something similar? I understand that "Hey it's a business" and everyone needs to turn a profit but let's be honest... a lot of these downloads i'd bet are stagnant. Why not get a few extra bucks by marking them down more? After all don't we want Godly men and women to be able to have access to good resources? I honestly think that Logos is missing out in potential sales.

The other question I have is if community pricing is covering the costs to get something published why is it being marked up even further in pre-pub and then once it's good to go. Why not keep the same pricing to attract more buyers. If I was on the fence in Community Pricing I am no longer interested as the price soars up in Pre Pub and Post production. I know I can get these resources cheaper elsewhere.

Now don't get me wrong I know the standard salesman argument would be "But you see it indexes and you can search" and go through all the great Logos features... but again it really comes to price. This isn't the first time I have thought of it either but I wanted to get some feedback from the higher ups since I remember they occasionally came on here (at least when 4 transitioned into 5)

To conclude you'll get more of my money if you can make it attractive to me. This is digital stuff after all. It should be in your interest to get as much stuff into everyone's library that you can. Please honestly consider this. I think we could all stand to benefit from this. You as a company as you'll sell things that aren't selling, us as we gain access to more materials at a easier price, and the people we lead, work with and otherwise interact with after we learn.

Thanks for your time

In Christ

Brian

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

elnwood

Off topic, but Gog.com is far superior to Steam. Their sales are as good or better than Steam, and all the games are DRM-free. And, you don't have to run the game through the Steam interface.

mwk

If only it were that easy.

> I understand that "Hey it's a business" and everyone needs to turn a profit but let's be honest... a lot of these downloads i'd bet are stagnant.

But that's a big point... you don't know that for sure. You're just "betting" there are a lot of stagnant titles.

In some cases, you're probably right. However, I see a lot of speculation (and been guilty of it myself) about how Logos does things or should do things based on an incomplete picture.

After attending Camp Logos recently and having some discussions on prices and the general market for Logos products, I'm a lot less critical about prices than I might have been in the past.

Frankly, as a business, I would be concerned about lowering prices after a time on two fronts. First, people who bought it earlier at a higher price are simply going to be ticked and let it be know all over the forum. Second, if people see a pattern of prices being dropped after some period of time, might they wait until later? If so, is that a good business model? If sales aren't initially strong because people are waiting, how does that affect the willingness of publishers to partner with Logos?

I also wonder if prices reflect deals with the publishers. In other words, a price was set and there would need to be a renegotiation to change the price as it might affect what a publisher receives for the sale. In my mind, as a publisher, some sales is better than none, so renegotiation would be good. But again, that's an opinion based on an incomplete picture.

As for Steam (or GOG which I prefer), I think that's not an fair comparison on a number of levels... mostly, not to be redundant, because of not having the full picture of how those services are structuring deals with publishers, potential market, etc.

Listen... I see where you're coming from. I've got about $800 worth of stuff in my Wish List. If they whacked the price by 50%, I might be tempted to grab it all at once. For now, I have to chip away at it bit by bit and there's always a risk that I might later decide I don't need some of that stuff. In fact, I just dropped $200 worth of books off the Wish List today. That's products I'm not likely to reconsider buying which is lost sales for them.

But we really don't know the inner-workings of all that goes on with pricing, licensing, etc. to say what they should be doing. We tend to view things as a buyer. The view is a lot different as the seller.

> "But you see it indexes and you can search" and go through all the great Logos features... but again it really comes to price.

I used to be one who said, "Hey, you can get this cheaper at Amazon!" But again, after the Camp Logos experience, I have a much better respect for the work that goes into these books. All those great features do come with a price including when you have to go back through books and resources to add other implementations of new features that get added to Logos.

I'm certainly not opposed to lower prices. But you're not the first to make comments like this (nor the last) and Logos can likely rattle off dozens of reasons why it doesn't work the way we think it should work.

No harm in asking, though. [:)]

Jack Caviness

I was thinking when browsing other resources for Logos that the good stuff rarely goes on sale.

The issue of Logos' pricing is periodically raised on these forums, and the simple answer remains that Logos is still a for-profit business. Game-makers can—and perhaps must—have sales because a hot game swiftly becomes stale, and the gaming community moves on to the latest and greatest game. Logos' products do not become stale and dated. The market remains.

Dan Francis

Logos in the past has had rebate sales, where everything you bought in december resulted in a coupon. This was a couple years back but at one level you had 50% back. Now it's not the same thing as a sale but you could have found in the end a $1000 commentary was yours free because you had the rebates to pay for it. I do believe it is the publishers who in the end control most of the price. Sometimes they allow Logos or other companies to give you a super a deal but it doesn't happen often and it really should Logos is a very secure medium. I often remove DRM off my Amazon books i want to access on an old PPC computer, I have never failed to easily convert them over to an ePUB, and often books on Amazon are far cheaper than on Logos. Logos is safe, while the DRM on Amazon is easily removed and can spread anywhere. Publishers should honour Logos security by allowing them to have better rates, but this is only my opinion.

-Dan

Brian. E.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/505274#Comment_505274

I was thinking when browsing other resources for Logos that the good stuff rarely goes on sale.

The issue of Logos' pricing is periodically raised on these forums, and the simple answer remains that Logos is still a for-profit business. Game-makers can—and perhaps must—have sales because a hot game swiftly becomes stale, and the gaming community moves on to the latest and greatest game. Logos' products do not become stale and dated. The market remains.

I suppose I haven't browsed or frequented the forum enough to have known that. I do apologize for rehashing what appears to be a frequent topic.

I would charitably disagree with your analysis. Gamers enjoy and pay for retro games. I think your analogy works in things that are annualized there are numerous titles that stand the test of time and or are enjoyed from a nostalgic purpose.

Logos is literally the only company with pricing like that. Music, video, games and even ebooks are priced competitively. We can put the emphasis if the Steam reference doesn't work for some people. That and there are numerous titles that in the public domain that can be obtained free.

Let's look at esword. I can get numerous titles for free.One example is Matthew Poole's commentary set.

On here (http://www.logos.com/product/8517/matthew-pooles-commentary-on-the-holy-bible) I can pay for Matthew Poole's commentary when i have it free on esword or I can get a physical copy for $23 at Christian Book http://www.christianbook.com/matthew-pooles-commentary-3-volumes/matthew-poole/9780917006289/pd/06283

Logos starting price point is $30 in community pricing saying I am getting a deal at $99.95 (77%) off the full price of $129.95. In what world is this a deal? That and it doesn't answer my question as to why the price is going up once it hits prepub and once it's finalized. $129.95 is a fair price when physical copies are $100 cheaper? Something seems amiss.

Unix

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/505276#Comment_505276

I haven't checked, but I think Logos has more titles in the store than what, for a comparison, a game store has.

What would such sales look like? Would the homepage be a hundred pages long and 15 Logos marketing emails a day drop to our inboxes even though we would have only a few checkboxes ticked? Or would we be supposed to just search on the website - in that case how many would find the less sought for/less known books?

Why drop the prices only on popular items? I bet the New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible is going to be popular once it has made it into production, BUT it's cheap now if You can wait! Meanwhile, many base-packages contain some sort of Bible dictionary that we can use. Now, I don't want to see NIDB ever included in a base-package.

Free choice which Bible dictionary to have, is important.

What theology/denomination should Logos support? The forums would turn into wild debate about these kind of things, and it's not the intended kind of use for the forums, if Logos should decide to announce very steep discounts.

Regarding commentaries, should low sales prices be announced only for the individual volumes, or only for the complete sets, or for both? That's a pretty tricky question IMHO, and I already have the Hermeneia set since a while so personally I don't need a whole lot of sales on existing sets.

Or should Logos sales focus on quite new commentary sets that are being released that still have only a handful of volumes? IMO that might be an idea, but on the other hand many would ask questions and no-one would know anything about those "sets".

Unix

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/505285#Comment_505285

Brian, regarding pre-pub, not CP, I've seen graphs that the typical sales curve plains out some time after the product has shipped despite that the pre-pub price has mostly not been at a good discount!:

Logos starting price point is $30 in community pricing saying I am getting a deal at $99.95 (77%) off the full price of $129.95. In what world is this a deal? That and it doesn't answer my question as to why the price is going up once it hits prepub and once it's finalized. $129.95 is a fair price when physical copies are $100 cheaper? Something seems amiss.

Brian. E.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/505271#Comment_505271

But that's a big point... you don't know that for sure. You're just "betting" there are a lot of stagnant titles.

True. I think it's a safe bet. How many of those $500+ sets are flying out the door daily? I am sure I could go through and pick enough titles to prove this. While it's speculative I think it's right. There is always room to increase sales on a product. What is has been this year, last year, last week vary. Why not give us some incentive to pull the trigger.

[quote]Frankly, as a business, I would be concerned about lowering prices after a time on two fronts. First, people who bought it earlier at a higher price are simply going to be ticked and let it be know all over the forum. Second, if people see a pattern of prices being dropped after some period of time, might they wait until later?

As with steam you get people that pay full price. You get people that can only afford so much. You get some from both groups on particular titles. It seems to be working.

[quote]If so, is that a good business model? If sales aren't initially strong because people are waiting, how does that affect the willingness of publishers to partner with Logos?

I think you raise on excellent point here. This is the great big unknown. We don't know how it works.... unless it's a post somewhere that I am ignorant on. Logos isn't really forthcoming with that kind of data.

[quote]Listen... I see where you're coming from. I've got about $800 worth of stuff in my Wish List. If they whacked the price by 50%, I might be tempted to grab it all at once. For now, I have to chip away at it bit by bit and there's always a risk that I might later decide I don't need some of that stuff. In fact, I just dropped $200 worth of books off the Wish List today. That's products I'm not likely to reconsider buying which is lost sales for them.

See and that's what I am addressing. I bet logos would love an opportunity to make a sale somehow. You get a guy on the phone and they may offer you a percentage off titles. I have had that once in the past when i Got 4. If the higher ups read that and see a lost chance for business you think they could come up with a way to acceptably meet in the middle. Since this is a business.... that's what would make a good businessman. Let's get you those titles, I (logos) get something and you can use this data to train or lead others or just strengthen your own understanding.

[quote]I used to be one who said, "Hey, you can get this cheaper at Amazon!" But again, after the Camp Logos experience, I have a much better respect for the work that goes into these books. All those great features do come with a price including when you have to go back through books and resources to add other implementations of new features that get added to Logos.

Well it sounds like you were privvy to something a lot of us weren't. That's cool but I don't think it really negates my point. Unless I am being daft and it does and I don't see it

[quote]I'm certainly not opposed to lower prices. But you're not the first to make comments like this (nor the last) and Logos can likely rattle off dozens of reasons why it doesn't work the way we think it should work.

No harm in asking, though. Smile

It's an interesting discussion none the less. Wouldn't that be great if it worked? If it did I could easily recommend this program to tons of others. With it's pricing structure I can't in good conscience do that.

Brian. E.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/505289#Comment_505289

I haven't checked, but I think Logos has more titles in the store than what, for a comparison, a game store has.

What would such sales look like? Would the homepage be a hundred pages long and 15 Logos marketing emails a day drop to our inboxes even though we would have only a few checkboxes ticked? Or would we be supposed to just search on the website - in that case how many would find the less sought for/less known books?

I actually provided the link so you could look and get an idea of what I am talking about. I think you are making this seem more difficult and confusing than it needs to be.

Why not do it quarterly? Pick 60 items (individual items or sets). Display 15 per page. Just the title and discount price. Clicking the link would give you the full webpage with the run down of what it is. It can be easily streamlined to look professional and browse through. On steam's site which I linked it's easy to pick games at a certain price point and then scroll and click through batches of games based on price.

[quote]Why drop the prices only on popular items? I bet the New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible is going to be popular once it has made it into production, BUT it's cheap now if You can wait! Meanwhile, many base-packages contain some sort of Bible dictionary that we can use. Now, I don't want to see NIDB ever included in a base-package.

This is an odd section to me. Why would you not want something in a base package? It sounds like you want it to be more difficult for people to have access to something? Not sure what you mean here. Please feel free to correct me but I was left scratching my head.

[quote]What theology/denomination should Logos support? The forums would turn into wild debate about these kind of things, and it's not the intended kind of use for the forums, if Logos should decide to announce very steep discounts.

Why is this a problem? Logos already carries a multitude of things. Catholic, protestant, new and old. Why not some from each? Again you seem to make this sound more problematic than it really is. Or perhaps the forumers are that fickle that they would be up in arms about some guy scoring a deal on a variety of texts that benefited his walk in Christ or led to benefiting others

[quote]Regarding commentaries, should low sales prices be announced only for the individual volumes, or only for the complete sets, or for both? That's a pretty tricky question IMHO, and I already have the Hermeneia set since a while so personally I don't need a whole lot of sales on existing sets.

Logos did both in the final four if I remember correctly. I'd personally rather not piecemeal a set but it's not about me. Having the option to do both appeals to everyone expect the guy that doesn't want the deal.

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/505285#Comment_505285

I was thinking when browsing other resources for Logos that the good stuff rarely goes on sale.

The issue of Logos' pricing is periodically raised on these forums, and the simple answer remains that Logos is still a for-profit business. Game-makers can—and perhaps must—have sales because a hot game swiftly becomes stale, and the gaming community moves on to the latest and greatest game. Logos' products do not become stale and dated. The market remains.

I suppose I haven't browsed or frequented the forum enough to have known that. I do apologize for rehashing what appears to be a frequent topic.

I would charitably disagree with your analysis. Gamers enjoy and pay for retro games. I think your analogy works in things that are annualized there are numerous titles that stand the test of time and or are enjoyed from a nostalgic purpose.

Logos is literally the only company with pricing like that. Music, video, games and even ebooks are priced competitively. We can put the emphasis if the Steam reference doesn't work for some people. That and there are numerous titles that in the public domain that can be obtained free.

Let's look at esword. I can get numerous titles for free.One example is Matthew Poole's commentary set.

On here (http://www.logos.com/product/8517/matthew-pooles-commentary-on-the-holy-bible) I can pay for Matthew Poole's commentary when i have it free on esword or I can get a physical copy for $23 at Christian Book http://www.christianbook.com/matthew-pooles-commentary-3-volumes/matthew-poole/9780917006289/pd/06283

Logos starting price point is $30 in community pricing saying I am getting a deal at $99.95 (77%) off the full price of $129.95. In what world is this a deal? That and it doesn't answer my question as to why the price is going up once it hits prepub and once it's finalized. $129.95 is a fair price when physical copies are $100 cheaper? Something seems amiss.

I would disagree with your disagreement. I am an avid gamer, and Jack was exactly right. No one is going to go back and buy an old game at full price, because it is already played out. This is why Playstation for instance has its "Greatest Hits" titles that sell for $19.99 or less. This is also why games will come out with bundled additions that have all of the extra Downloadable Content. Gamers are not going to spend a lot on old games, so companies are constantly finding new ways to market old games at discounted prices. I just bought the entire F.E.A.R collection from Steam for $9.99. That is because people are not buying those games anymore.

Now, you compare Logos with esword. Esword gives away products that are in the public domain, or free for any number of reasons, and they are not tagged as extensively as Logos books are, so you can't compare the two. This is the same with your Logos/Paper comparison. Yes, Amazon and Christianbook might sell them cheaper, but tagging resources is not cheap, and you are paying a bit extra for the convenience of having an interwoven library, with all of the special features that involves. If that is not something that you find useful, then you can download Kindle books cheaper.

As far as sales are concerned, you really just have to look out for them. I bought NICOT/NT sometime last year for $1000, and Hermeneia/Continental for $600. This is significantly cheaper than any print or digital platform price. March madness sales are usually pretty big. I was able to get all of NT Wright's works, as well as DA Carson's for 75% off.

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/505297#Comment_505297

Why not do it quarterly? Pick 60 items (individual items or sets). Display 15 per page. Just the title and discount price. Clicking the link would give you the full webpage with the run down of what it is. It can be easily streamlined to look professional and browse through. On steam's site which I linked it's easy to pick games at a certain price point and then scroll and click through batches of games based on price.

Also, I just wanted to make sure that you do realize that there is actually a sale page here.

Jack Caviness

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/505285#Comment_505285

Logos is literally the only company with pricing like that. Music, video, games and even ebooks are priced competitively.

You are comparing apples with oranges. If you wish to compare Logos' pricing with its real competitors, then you need to look to Accordance and BibleWorks. Nothing else comes close to the added value Logos puts into it resources.

Let's look at esword. I can get numerous titles for free.One example is Matthew Poole's commentary set.

If those kinds of resources meet your Bible study needs, then Logos is definitely not for you.

Unix

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/505297#Comment_505297

March Madness 2013 was the first sale of that kind. About 500 volumes were on a sale, ranging from 30%-75%:

Why not do it quarterly? Pick 60 items (individual items or sets). Display 15 per page. Just the title and discount price. Clicking the link would give you the full webpage with the run down of what it is. It can be easily streamlined to look professional and browse through. On steam's site which I linked it's easy to pick games at a certain price point and then scroll and click through batches of games based on price:
What would such sales look like? Would the homepage be a hundred pages long and 15 Logos marketing emails a day drop to our inboxes even though we would have only a few checkboxes ticked? Or would we be supposed to just search on the website - in that case how many would find the less sought for/less known books?

It's not the easiest thing to pull a deal with that particular publisher, Logos's production costs for it is a few tens of thousands of $:

This is an odd section to me. Why would you not want something in a base package? It sounds like you want it to be more difficult for people to have access to something? Not sure what you mean here. Please feel free to correct me but I was left scratching my head:
Why drop the prices only on popular items? I bet the New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible is going to be popular once it has made it into production, BUT it's cheap now if You can wait! Meanwhile, many base-packages contain some sort of Bible dictionary that we can use. Now, I don't want to see NIDB ever included in a base-package.

It's not all that easy to spread it even: most books are very difficult to tag denominationally and Logos is not attempting to tag everything they offer. And yes that IS actually the scenario we are looking at here!:

Why not some from each? [...] Or perhaps the forumers are that fickle that they would be up in arms about some guy scoring a deal on a variety of texts that benefited his walk in Christ or led to benefiting others:
What theology/denomination should Logos support? The forums would turn into wild debate about these kind of things, and it's not the intended kind of use for the forums, if Logos should decide to announce very steep discounts.

Just like one of it's competitors (Accordance offers less commentaries but for a lower regular price), Logos focuses a whole lot on commentaries:

Logos did both in the final four if I remember correctly. I'd personally rather not piecemeal a set but it's not about me. Having the option to do both appeals to everyone expect the guy that doesn't want the deal:
Regarding commentaries, should low sales prices be announced only for the individual volumes, or only for the complete sets, or for both? That's a pretty tricky question IMHO, and I already have the Hermeneia set since a while so personally I don't need a whole lot of sales on existing sets.

William Gabriel

Why can't Logos do something similar? I understand that "Hey it's a business" and everyone needs to turn a profit but let's be honest... a lot of these downloads i'd bet are stagnant. Why not get a few extra bucks by marking them down more? After all don't we want Godly men and women to be able to have access to good resources? I honestly think that Logos is missing out in potential sales.

...

To conclude you'll get more of my money if you can make it attractive to me. This is digital stuff after all. It should be in your interest to get as much stuff into everyone's library that you can. Please honestly consider this. I think we could all stand to benefit from this. You as a company as you'll sell things that aren't selling, us as we gain access to more materials at a easier price, and the people we lead, work with and otherwise interact with after we learn.

That's one way of looking at it. Another is that people might have a "Logos budget" and they'll buy as much (or little) as they can with the funds available to them. Perhaps they could entice a few extra people to spend money they shouldn't or grab a few more at the lower end, but for those of us investing in Logos right now, it's always been about allocating the dollars I have in the best manner possible. In other words, Logos may not actually see their revenues increase if they drop prices.

The other question I have is if community pricing is covering the costs to get something published why is it being marked up even further in pre-pub and then once it's good to go. Why not keep the same pricing to attract more buyers. If I was on the fence in Community Pricing I am no longer interested as the price soars up in Pre Pub and Post production. I know I can get these resources cheaper elsewhere.

I think you're really on to something here. I bought my first Logos package during the famed Christmas sale of 2011 (so thankful for that!) and started placing bids in Community Pricing. I've gotten most of the Classic Commentaries thanks to that timing, but I was too late to the game for Genesis and Galatians. They currently sit at $200 and $170, respectively. Now, for public domain works that have had their production costs covered, that seems a tad bit expensive to me. I have had them in my Wish List since I learned about CC, and I don't believe I've seen them on sale since! For a completely free item for logos (capital costs covered, marginal costs very close to $0), I feel that they're stingy with them.

The other one is the Evangelical Exegetical Commentary set, which one where Logos is the publisher and owns the copyright. They probably have royalties they have to pay out, but certainly they're not constrained from changing prices by the publisher. I believe the last time it was on sale was well before I had a Logos base package (May 2011). It was $750 then, which still isn't low enough to really entice me to buy it (I'd probably snap it up at $500). Makes me think that Logos needs to have a bid system that sales people can "shop" (you tell Logos that $$ is the most you'd spend for resource X, and if at some point the company or a sales person thinks it's a good idea--they pull the trigger). /rabbit trail over

But the point is that Logos has a suite of resources they can play the sales game with to really get people hooked. Yet they seem to hold their cards closest to their chest.