Provide Better Book Previews in Store

The previews of books in the Logos store are very limited. At the bare minimum, the full table of contents should be provided for every book; a short contiguous sample of a chapter would also be good.

Repeatedly I find myself going to Amazon.com to get a better preview* of books for an informed purchasing decision. FaithLife, do you really want people to visit Amazon before deciding to buy from your store?

(*And for better reviews. You all who keep giving an automatic 5-star rating to each and every book--please stop that.)

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Comments

DAL

Many of us have requested that several times; especially on Lexham Press titles which have zero previews/sample pages. Maybe some day...

Bob Pritchett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1072566#Comment_1072566

The few Lexham titles I just checked all had 'See Inside' functionality (on a button below the book cover).

FWIW, I know we're working on improving our page preview functionality for print pages... is there a particular title(s) that need more preview?

We've discussed getting full table of contents preview, even apart from 'See Inside', and this is a helpful reminder... thanks!

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1072574#Comment_1072574

The few Lexham titles I just checked all had 'See Inside' functionality (on a button below the book cover).

Many resources only have a scan of half-a-dozen pages from the print edition. This is true of all pre-pubs, but it's also true of several books that are already available. One example is the current free book of the month, Jonathan Edwards' Freedom of the Will. Ideally, this shouldn't happen for resources already available, and pre-pubs should have the TOC pages included.

Even when the "See Inside" functionality is included, it's far more limited than Amazon. See inside tends to give a small selection of single pages throughout the book. For example, Jesus, Paul and the People of God gives pages 33, 62-63, 96, 115, 150-151, 181, 214, 248-249, 273. That's a total of 12 pages, but you don't really get a sense of the book, because you're only reading a single page.

For the same book, Amazon gives the full TOC, plus pages 8-12, 14-17, 21-26, 29-33, 36-39, 40-44, 46-50, 52-54, 57-60, 62-64, 66, 68-72, 76-78, 80-81, plus the back matter. That's a total of 55 pages, all from the first three chapters. That gives a far greater sense of the content. It's much more useful to read a few contiguous pages from the early chapters than it is to read just a single page from each chapter. (This is from the print preview. The Kindle preview is more limited.)

DAL

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1072580#Comment_1072580

All the Lexham Press titles here don’t have a look inside or scanned sample pages. Not even in the prepub section, which keep me from preordering at times because there are no samples: https://www.logos.com/search?sortBy=Newest&limit=60&page=1&ownership=all&filters=publisher-3914_Publisher

DAL

Ps. The Lexham Press website also lacks previews.

Thanks for checking in on this 👍😁👌

Jack Caviness

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1072583#Comment_1072583

Ps. The Lexham Press website also lacks previews.

Tried one Lexham Press PDP and found not see inside link https://www.logos.com/product/175837/the-world-turned-upside-down-finding-the-gospel-in-stranger-things

Kevin A. Purcell

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1072574#Comment_1072574

FWIW, I know we're working on improving our page preview functionality for print pages... is there a particular title(s) that need more preview?

We've discussed getting full table of contents preview, even apart from 'See Inside', and this is a helpful reminder... thanks!

Another suggestion - maybe the TOC and part of the index if it exists in a book. I often look at both to judge a book before buying.

DAL

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1072749#Comment_1072749

I will say this, though: The previews are better than the ones offered by Accordance on their website. So is not all bad, but it can be improved

👍😁👌

DAL