Personal Books Tool Survey

Took the survey. 

ePub support for personal books would be a game-changer for me. I have a lot of things in that format.

Thanks for the opportunity to feedback Phil.

Done

Since we could only choose our top future feature I'm curious about what people chose and why. They were all things I would like but I ended up with improved tagging options because that would improve the level of integration a personal book has with Logos. I like the idea of my personal book being able to appear in things such as Biblical Places (my own pictures of those places) or timelines.

I chose importing ePub and PDF over the other really appealing feature of syncing to mobile. But I'm really torn on the ePub PDF thing because it's so obviously going to be abused (I think) and such a bad deal for Faithlife if it means less sales on some current resources and future resources they might acquire (and it probably will).

For instance, through my library I  have Irons' dissertation on the righteousness of God  that was later turned into a >$90 book. So why would I pay what would surely  be over $100 for a Faithlife edition when I  could just import the PDF? But the truth is, going from PDF to Word isn't that hard for this who are determined to do it. The fact is any display of words on a screen can be captured and turned into a document, you don't need a PDF file. A lot of the older users may just not be that tech savvy. This may be similar to the old mp3 and Napster fiasco from several years ago. In the end,the music industry figured out that the solution was, at first, counterintuitive : if you make the music really accessible at an attractive price point, people are just willing to pay for the convenience of buying your music on Amazon or iTunes rather than the slightly more convoluted and fragmented process of ripping it off YouTube. Right now I don't think this option is even on the table for Faithlife.... 

J. Remington Bowling said:

I chose importing ePub and PDF over the other really appealing feature of syncing to mobile.

I wonder how well a PDF parser can perform though. PDF is so general and focused on presentational information, which makes it so hard to convert. (Existing PDF to docx converters does a poor job.)

Yes. Being able to rank would have been great.

Importing from other formats would have probably been my lowest. Simply because converting formats into docx is pretty straightforward if I want to do it. I'm more interested in creating original content so tools and options to make these and tag them more richly would be great.  

That's very interesting! Survey taken.

I chose the Sync to mobile. Since there was only one option allowed, I'll write my favorites here:
1. Syncing my personal books to mobile devices and the web app
2. Sharing personal books with other users
3. Buying/selling personal books in a personal books store
4. Better management of books in the Personal Books tool

Mikko Paavola said:

2. Sharing personal books with other users

I assume that Mikko Paavola means books that he has written and not just books that he has made in to PBB as Bob stated that most PBB are copyrighted materials.   https://community.logos.com/forums/p/126859/848584.aspx#848584 

I have imported 311 PBBs but have not uploaded any as most are from a long defunct source that serve a denominational bent that has little active support in Logos. 

But I have also imported some from Logos Blogs.  Major use is for use in searches.

Added:

Now that I have spent a few more minutes thinking about this PBB in Logos is a very powerful tool for those denominations that Logos gives little active support.  Logos has given some support to SDA and Orthodox but look at the lack of activity on their forums.  The SDA group on Faithlife has been sharing their quarterly studies since late 2013.  Logos is NOT going to input a quarterly study BUT active members of the group can find the time to put the study into a docx file.  The PBB tool makes this possible.

David Ames said:

Mikko Paavola said:

2. Sharing personal books with other users

I assume that Mikko Paavola means books that he has written and not just books that he has made in to PBB as Bob stated that most PBB are copyrighted materials.   https://community.logos.com/forums/p/126859/848584.aspx#848584 

Yes, definitely not copyrighted materials, but my own products, like Luther's Works Index file, etc., and Public Domain works, like old books and Bible translations in Finnish language, etc.

David Ames said:

Now that I have spent a few more minutes thinking about this PBB in Logos is a very powerful tool for those denominations that Logos gives little active support.  Logos has given some support to SDA and Orthodox but look at the lack of activity on their forums. 

I agree wholeheartedly. I am confident that logos would sell a wider range if there was a demand for them. Logos cannot afford to subsidise low selling denominations.

JohnB said:

Although I voted for uploading to Mobile platforms I keep wondering if I should have gone for better tagging for maps etc as a previous poster mentioned.

What I do now is the upload PPB's in epub format so I can read them there.

One never knows, I might get an invitation for a chat! 

I did not know epubs could be uploaded. I also voted in the survey. If they are going to do this, I would hope (and I know this is kind of competing against themselves to some extent), have some automatic tagging for books they already keep on their system. Through great effort I've gotten two base packages, Academic Essentials, and Orthodox Starter. It was very difficult to get them because I had to beg friends and family for the funds because as I've stated I'm crippled and always broke. For me, that is a LOT of money. So I'm not simply trying to get "free" stuff. I'm invested into this software. But it's largely unaffordable. I kind of have my own "ministry" in that it's 2-3 people, depending on how they could be classified. I'll add more people as I meet them. But that being said, I cannot afford a feature upgrade at all, and it's very fortunate I've been able to get what I have. I am asking that if I have an ebook which is already in my library, for Logos to be willing to have that eBook be automatically integrated (not owned, but maybe "access".) I ask because it's impossible for me to afford much especially multi volume sets like the New American Commentary or Charlesworth's Pseudepigrapha. I realize they won't, and probably CAN'T do it, but a man can dream. Even bronze and maybe some silver packages (silver is very likely a bridge too far) doesn't contain commentaries of the scholarly type. My friends and I focus less on "life coach" style stuff, and more something resembling scholarly study. I do have a worthless BA in History but I'll never be able to pursue graduate due to cost.

(Also, I'm not Orthodox, but I have Orthodox sympathies, and it came with all volumes of the Church Fathers. 'Protestants' could learn a lot from Orthodox Christianity, just discard veneration, and wilder theology. An argument can be made for intercessory prayer (definitely not veneration), but it's weak in my opinion.)

Were I dictator for an hour I'd abolish copyright. If I were for a dicator for a week I'd change it to a very tiny licensing fee allowing for free use.

Chris Belmonte said:

I am asking that if I have an ebook which is already in my library, for Logos to be willing to have that eBook be automatically integrated (not owned, but maybe "access".)

What you request seems to be similar in how Apple Music match your own music library to give you cloud access. Apple can do it, because they have huge bargaining power (and even theirs sometimes is not enough and drag into multi-years negotiations.)

Also, in the entertainment industry, they have precedent for this kind of idea, e.g. UltraViolet (soon to be dead), MovieAnywhere, that one owns a license to access a movie anywhere, regardless of platforms.

But something like this is very difficult for Logos for at least 2 reasons.

1. Licensing. Note that in the Movie case, those that start the idea are initiated from the license holders. i.e. Logos have no say in this unless the publishers want this happened.
2. Investments in integrations into the platform. Again, in the Movie/Music case, the service provider doesn't do much except for providing computation resources (including transcoding, hosting, etc.), but not much manual work requiring manpower is needed. But we all know that so called "Logos edition" is a premium that requires a lot of manpower, while the resource they sell generally is similar to their competitor's offerings. The worst case scenario is something published in Amazon Kindle format, and sell at a loss (not uncommon from Amazon), and then people match that license in Logos. Then they don't gain a dime but lost on the resources put into making it available. Stuffs from non-Logos edition do not have this problem however.

Chris Belmonte said:

It was very difficult to get them because I had to beg friends and family for the funds because as I've stated I'm crippled and always broke. For me, that is a LOT of money. So I'm not simply trying to get "free" stuff.

Buying resources from Logos can be very expensive. And we need to understand Logos' intended market here. It is really just not for the poor, period. That said, Logos has done a lot of things making something affordable to poor people at the price of free. I won't go much into the business model behind those Lexham free resources, but it is quite a genius one. And those resources are quite good, especially at the price of free. Without Logos' contribution, free resources either means public domain kind of stuffs, free but internet access only copyrighted Bibles, or some occasional generous offers (such as the free ESV Global Study Bible, which I think is not as good a resource as the Faithlife Study Bible.

Logos is more like Apple in the aspect that bringing premium stuffs (a.k.a. no compromise kind of stuffs) affordable for the masses. People often complain how expensive a Mac (or iDevice) is, but in reality if one want to find a counterpart that matches the spec and also the material put into it (like the quality of the panel, aluminum finish rather than plastic, etc.), it is the cheapest one. The same is true in Logos, yes the price isn't cheap in any standard, but it is usually more, often much more, than the competitions (including buying separately. i.e. packaged deal is so great.)

Now I don't know you in person (if you want to we could start to chat somewhere, say in the Faithlife social network.) But I've been very poor, and I know what it was like to have absolutely no money to invest in any resources at all. In the beginning of being a Christian, all my Christian resources are obtained for free. Bible gifted from the Church; spiritual books by others, many of them are from when I got baptized; a study Bible gifted by my uncle who was a pastor, etc. Yes, the quality of most of those stuffs cannot compare to what I'm using right now in Logos. But, that's an environment God put me in, and He has provided all I needed.

(Or we can imagine we are pushed back a century, now we don't have Logos, most multi-volume commentaries are not affordable to most people including us, isn't what we have all sufficient already?)

If your situation is as bad as I might have understood form your posts and wordings, my humble advice to you is stop begging others for the funds. You might eventually get them. But for the meanwhile it seems there's better use of those funds. (At the very least, save it for the future!) But again, the usual disclaimer that I don't know you personally, so I might be wrong. But I hope that at least you're open to this different opinion to think through what you really need right now.

God bless.

JT (alabama24) said:

Chris Belmonte said:

Were I dictator for an hour I'd abolish copyright.

1 Timothy 5:18

I agree, the laborer does deserve his wages. But our copyright system is a disaster and predatory. It needs reform not abolition. However if I only had an hour i'd do with it what I could. It's so bad abolishing it would be better despite that not being good.

David Ames said:

Chris Belmonte said:

I agree, the laborer does deserve his wages. But our copyright system is a disaster and predatory. It needs reform not abolition. However if I only had an hour i'd do with it what I could. It's so bad abolishing it would be better despite that not being good.

Currently the author has all rights for a given period of time. Then the work goes into the public domain. [[What is that time? 75 years?]]

Before about 1900 it was a free for all. And Yes, what works for dead tree printing lacks a few things in the ePub world.  

What changes would you make?  

DMCA is completely repealed. All copyright law is scrapped. In place of that, anyone who wants to produce derivative works, modify, or sell something, this applies to anything, has to pay an extremely tiny license fee to the original creator or rights holder for x number of years. This doesn't effect the price of something. The price is whatever someone wants to set it as. If you're selling someone else's invention, you're free to do so, provided you pay the license fee. Say 1% of net profits or something. No one can be sued or go to jail for distributing a work or invention for free either. As long as they aren't selling it, they can do what they want. I know almost everyone here is going to disagree with me on this position. Property must be scarce to be property. If it's non-scarce it's by definition not property. Telling someone they cannot copy something is the same as stealing from them, because you're either transferring ownership of their physical property to the rights holder, or regulating what someone is allowed to do with their own physical property. If I buy a DVD disk, don't tell me I can't do what I want with it.

If that's stealing its still also stealing to tell someone they can't use their own property as they see fit, as a result, if they are both stealing then no one is stealing. My opposition to regulation on copying is motivated by political principles, not scripture. Please don't get mad at me for not referring to scripture on this. There was no such thing as nonscarcity during those times. As a result, you can't quote scripture to try to address it. No one ever needed permission to copy or translate the Bible, and that was a seriously taxing labor. And if we count the Bible as a special case exempt, then I would say in that that should also apply to any and all material which is needed (and that includes extremely expensive academic material and even non-Christian material like translations and analyses of ancient texts, say Ugarit) for understanding our faith in an era where like never before do we need extremely educated Christians, an army of them, to defend and spread the Gospel.

It was only in the increasingly secular and unChristian "enlightenment" period that the concept of intellectual property wormed it's way into both thought and any significant law.

Who does copyright harm the most? It primarily effects people who believe IP is legitimate and in this case case, people who want to learn.

For a license,maybe the duration of that persons' life if he or she dies early than x amount of years after that to his/her kin. 

Chris Belmonte said:

If that's stealing its still also stealing to tell someone they can't use their own property as they see fit

You have a very serious misunderstanding on who own the property then.

Another way to see it is this, for the reason you despise free resources, if copyright works like you want it to work, most if not all resources in the world will have the similar kind of quality of those free resources you despise. And in that imaginary world, there's someone like you complaining why people for the sake of the Lord don't devote more of their time and effort to provide better resources.

The world is what it is, not that anyone might like it. But shouldn't we be submissive to it, to God?

Or not that one can't be complaining. But why complain if it is not constructive? You and I or anyone reading the forum here cannot (has no authority nor the ability nor the wisdom to) change the situation.

Also, the world is often not as simple as one might think (think how the current U.S. president think about how the world works.) Yes, there are always problems in the world. But there is often if not always no simple solution. Often time when one think there's a simple solution (think US president again), either he's deceptive or deceived.

Anyway, let's not digress anymore and back to the main topic of this thread.

Oh it seems I've gotten two different threads mixed up! I thought this was the "real world costs" thread!

Ok, getting back to PBB survey. If PDF import is provided, could you consider giving us the ability to view PDF directly as an option? I ask so because I think PDF parsing is too hit-and-miss. e.g. the papers I need to read always contains equations and no existing PDF to something converter parse those equations correctly.

Also, could you improve the PBB importer for it to better serve as a reference manager? e.g. automatically trying to detect the metadata from ePub/PDF/etc., has a search function to match existing metadata from popular repositories such as Google Books, arxiv.org, etc. Examples of reference managers are Papers (recently acquired by Readcube branded as Readcube Papers), Mendeley, Endnote, Refworks, Zotero, etc.

I know what I'm asking for is likely not considered. But if it does it would be wonderful since Logos/Noet is miles ahead of all existing reference managers. Logos handles citation well, but the only missing link for it to becomes a viable reference manager would be the import process.

Kolen, do you attend an ethnic Chinese church in California? I'm not sure if you're referring to China itself, or something that happened in America. Okay so i'm glad to see that it's not just me who thinks along the lines discussed. I'm extremely worried about the Chinese church, because the PRC government seems to be increasing on cracking down, even so far as to influence neighboring Nepal to crackdown on Christians in Nepal. The PRC views Christianity as a threat (and they are probably correct about that, since our faith is not compatible with their totalitarian regime). How strong do you think the church is there? Would you mind opening up direct communication with me? I don't know how to engage in private messages. I'd like to give you my email address but I don't want to post it publicly.

John Frame and Vern Poythress have a written a couple of thought-provoking articles on the issue of copyrights over the years. I post a link here for anyone who interested in reading them... be they a consumer, end user, or employee/CEO of a hypothetical bible software and book publisher [H].

https://frame-poythress.org/category/copyright-laws/ 

Chris Belmonte said:

Kolen, do you attend an ethnic Chinese church in California? I'm not sure if you're referring to China itself, or something that happened in America. Okay so i'm glad to see that it's not just me who thinks along the lines discussed. I'm extremely worried about the Chinese church, because the PRC government seems to be increasing on cracking down, even so far as to influence neighboring Nepal to crackdown on Christians in Nepal. The PRC views Christianity as a threat (and they are probably correct about that, since our faith is not compatible with their totalitarian regime). How strong do you think the church is there? Would you mind opening up direct communication with me? I don't know how to engage in private messages. I'd like to give you my email address but I don't want to post it publicly.

My bad, I intensionally gloss over some details for them to be identified. The history I referred to, is history. Most people involved are dead. And the influential brother I mentioned repent before he died. In the past some people involved really hate each other, and hurt each other, and ironically most of them devoted to and love the Lord very much. So to not re-ignite any of the hatred involved I think it is best not to be too identifiable at least in the open web.

The current China situation is another matter. The short story is that I'm not involved. The tricky thing is how to stay not involved. I can tell you more about that in private.

I tried messaging you through Faithlife.com. But seems like you might have set up your account in a way that I can message you directly. You might try messaging me through Faithlife.com and see what happens.