Pre-Pub Pricing (Baker Books)

Not sure who that was directed at, nor what it exactly means.  (I am not being sarcastic or defensive, i really don't know.  Peace, Matthew!)

Hey Dan, Brother, I did a very lousy post at trying to finally agree with your points. Summarizing:

Pre-Pubs do not inherently mean deeply discounted.pricies. 

Baker is NOT overpriced at their suggested retail, IMHO.

I am happier to have the free choice to accept or reject a purchase in Logos format from any publisher than to not have that resource available at all.

I like having 45+ "Bibles". It makes me appreciate my favorites all the more.

I love having Portfolio Edition. It makes me appreciate BobP & Logos, especially in light of what other publishers charge per resource. (Thanks again Bob! [H] )

My only gripe with you Dan is How in the world did Tess quote your quote of my post & you get the nice compliment?? I wanna hijack some compliments like that! [6]

Bob,

Thank you for weighing in on this issue. Your insights are a great help to helping us understand the realities of the your business and I hope that our interactions are helpful to you in getting a pulse of where your customers are.

I am a bit surprised that your are surprised that your customers have the idea that PrePub means that the item is to be discounted. The old wording of the PrePub pages certainly suggested this and with just a few exceptions almost everything has been discounted.

Moreover, the way you price resources in your “download store” has conditioned us to not expect the resources there to 1) respond to completive pressure and 2) not reflect the realities of front-line vs. back-line prices. Let me give you an example.

Way back in Logos 1.8 days you started your first “publishing partner” relationships and one of your first was Baker. Baker released a number of Baker Byte products. At first these were just individual books. One of the very first resources I added to my library was the “Evangelical Commentary on the Bible.” I purchased it at a local Christian bookstore for the full MSRP which at the time seemed reasonable to me because it was still a fairly new book and at the time the only discount retailer I knew of that discounted Christian books was CBD.

Then Baker, decided to bundle a number of these resources together in their Level 1, 2 and 3 collections. While the cost of any of these collections at the time was more than the cost the individual books together they were such a good deal that I purchased Level 3 and still felt I came out ahead. I believe I spent something like $149 on it. In time, the normal retail pressure has been at work on these Baker collections and now a person can purchase one of these for $19.95 ($9.95 on sale) plus postage. I am still OK with this, I was an early adopter, and this is the price one has to pay for being an early adopter.

So what has happened in your unlock store? Well the Evangelical Commentary on the Bible is still selling for the full MSRP of $59.95! This is more than twice as much as the total collection is selling for! If a person was to unlock all the books on your web site that are on that $19.95 CD they would spend more than $500!

I take you at your word that you want to offer your customer the lowest prices possible, so the only conclusion I can draw from this is that there must be something in your agreement with your publishing partners that keeps you from competing with them in price. This BTW is why the majority of the anger is being directed towards your publishing partners, not Logos.

Moreover, your earlier front-line, back-line example does not hold true for your unlock store. Historical once one of your resources leaves PrePub it will remain forever at “front-line” prices. The Evangelical Commentary on the Bible is hardly a front-line product anymore, but it is still being priced as it was back in the day when I purchased my very first Baker Byte produce and had to install it with a 3.5 inch floppy.

I would be one of the biggest cheerleaders of this new deal with Baker if I knew that your resources would be priced like normal products were: Very expense for front-line products and discounted for back-line. This is the way I purchase other forms of digital media. I never purchase anything on new release Tuesday, but wait 6 months to 2 years until it can be found discounted. If this is the way things would work here I would be a happy camper.

However, from all I have historically seen from the way things work for Logos unlocks, Logos will be forced by your publishing partners to sell these very same books ten years from now for 100% of the MSRP. The PrePub for me was the one guaranteed opportunity I had to purchase Logos formatted resources at a discount. While some book might be discounted more heavily in a future by being included in a base product or in a “special” or in one of your partner’s box products, the PrePub was still the one shot guarantee of a discount. With this in mind, please understand our alarm when we see Logos book coming out of the gate at 100%.

I take you at your word that you truly believe that this “experiment” will not change the behavior of your other publishing partners. I ask you to please try to understand why many of us find this an unlikely scenario. If IVP sees, as one poster put it, “tons” of Baker books sold at 100% MSRP, I find it difficult to believe they would not want to be a part of the action and start demanding their “front-line” products to be sold for 100% MSRP.

Thanks Bob, for taking the time to be in dialog with us.

This is one of the most thoughtful posts in this thread.  I have to commend Keith for the reasonable tone.  He, in fact, has articulated how I, too, feel about pre-pubs and MSRPs.  I, too, would appreciate an explanation for why so many items remain at "front-line" prices, long after they were first published.  Mr. Pritchett, IIRC, suggested in another post that "fresh" titles must be sold at front-line prices, but -- again IIRC -- that later we could expect them to be sold for less.  (Or, at least, that's what he seemed to imply.)  I haven't seen a new Baker title yet that I will purchase.  But, if the price were to be lowered at some point in the future, I probably would pick up some of them.  IOW, none of them is a "must-have", IMO.  But they would have enough value to pick them up for the right price.  (Personal disclosure:  I am an L4 "fanboy."  I upgraded the day it was released -- and then again later.  It is first-rate, world-class Bible software.) 

I think it is rather presumptuous to either deny or claim that a particular individual or company or product is being used by God in a business environment.  While one may speculate on motivations related to a given price, product, or policy such observations are little more than fodder for energetic thread exchanges.  Praying for individuals and companies is entirely appropriate within a Christian community but there is a problem (imo) equating a price point with revelatory information with God.  As if God cares how much Logos or Quickverse charges for a product within a profit making endeavor.  I would hope when God sees our world and the suffering here that there are more important issues than market factors for those with enough money to purchase rather expensive Christian software.

I think it is rather presumptuous to either deny or claim that a particular individual or company or product is being used by God in a business environment.

Dear ReneAtchley,I would say,I think you have misread my opinion or you haven't understood me,I do'nt mean this Person or company is only used by God,but I believe God has invested on him the money and knowlege to use him as a tool for the benefit of the spreading of the Gospel massage .What I would say ,this man has done no pressure on  us,our money is with us ,we have our will, if we want we can buy if not ,we do'nt.

If some one thinks he hasn't done wisely ,one can talk to him or write to him, Myself I am very grateful to have access to the truth of the word.I do'nt know Bob or his people personaly ,I have come from anther continent I am now also living in another continent ,but I know one thing ,where ever we are we are one in Christ.Amen

Amen, Tes, Amen!

After reading so many not ;pleasant ;posts on this topic, Frankly(!) - I appreciate this ;post of yours.  Thank you!

:Peace and Joy in the Lord!

Yours in Christ, .................           .   Mel

Maybe one little change would help people's perception of the Baker prices: Change the wording of "Pre-Pub Special" to "Pre-Pub Price" when the price of pre-pub is the same as the SRP. Special implies a discount. If there's no discount, it shouldn't be called a Special.

The way it looks now, though it isn't intended to be deceptive, it could come across that way, or at the very least confusing or a typo. My very first post on this thread -- the 2nd post back on page 1 -- was a naive one because I hadn't heard the whole kerfuffle about the Baker pre-pub prices yet.

Maybe one little change would help people's perception of the Baker prices: Change the wording of "Pre-Pub Special" to "Pre-Pub Price" when the price of pre-pub is the same as the SRP. Special implies a discount. If there's no discount, it shouldn't be called a Special.

The way it looks now, though it isn't intended to be deceptive, it could come across that way, or at the very least confusing or a typo. My very first post on this thread -- the 2nd post back on page 1 -- was a naive one because I hadn't heard the whole kerfuffle about the Baker pre-pub prices yet.

Yes.  This is really the bottom line.  Rosie, you posted this at 6:12 PM on February 10.  Logos, if you are smart, you will change this wording first thing Thursday morning, February 11th, 2010.  This is what makes a company look like they don't know what they are doing.  You can't call something a special when it's the same price as the suggested retail.  

 

More than that, the bottom line is that Logos has only themselves to blame for this firestorm. As much as Bob and others would like think PrePub never was intended to mean "discount only," both the wording of the original description and this "special" wording implies that PrePubs are more than just an opportunity to order book pre-publication, but pre-publication at a discount.

Bob,

Thank you very much,God bless you,now you have made it vey clear ,so that no one judges a book by its cover.

or by its publisher

Thank you Dan.

Ich danke dir Dan.

Maybe one little change would help people's perception of the Baker prices: Change the wording of "Pre-Pub Special" to "Pre-Pub Price" when the price of pre-pub is the same as the SRP. Special implies a discount. If there's no discount, it shouldn't be called a Special.

The way it looks now, though it isn't intended to be deceptive, it could come across that way, or at the very least confusing or a typo. My very first post on this thread -- the 2nd post back on page 1 -- was a naive one because I hadn't heard the whole kerfuffle about the Baker pre-pub prices yet.

Thank you for listening and being so responsive, Logos!!! I just noticed this for the first time today, but the change might have been done a while ago:

Terry and Whyndell,

Please, both of you knock it off.  You both have a right to your political views and this is not the place to air them.

Whyndell, I do not consider your views hate speech, but they are out of place here.  Terry, don't you realize you are just provoking more of this?  I find you pronouncements about hate speech just as much a political statement.  No respect on either side.

Let's stay off the politics.  Sometimes the wise  thing is to just ignore. 

Which I will do from now on.

Perhaps you didn't notice, but those posts were from over a month ago.  They have "knocked it off".  No need to drag up old issues.