Unavailable

Martin Folley said:

The confusing bi is that they are available as eBooks ... outside of the US ... Amazon/Kindle have them ... so why does Zondervan say no to Logos but yes to Amazon?

Probably because Amazon has more clout. Way more overseas sales, so it's worth Zondervan's while to negotiate a deal with them.

While your maths is admirable I don’t agree FL makes it easy for us to get a true picture of the problem or want us to have a true picture.  You have had to make estimates and we can’t exclude the ‘Mills and Boon’ Novels along with other books that have not real connection to  bible study. I think your numbers are understated but that’s just my opinion and neithe of us really know the answer.

And the issue is not that they don’t want to sell to Non-US customers as they do so through other eBook vendor, the issue is with the way FL do things - FL have admitted the problem lies with them. They invested money in these new web sites - released them into production im a less than complete state and did not do their homework  to ensure they were playing in a way that met the requirements of these publishers in order to do business. FL has let all of their customers down with the poor searching options they have dished up in these supposed to be improved websites and let their international customers down by not being able to meet contract requirements of these publishers. 

NB.Mick said:

DIsciple II said:

Martin Folley said:

Interesting  ... is there any book that the Ebooks can sell in the UK? It often feels that nothing is for sale.

Martin Folley said:

It is available in the UK from other suppliers ... it is available to Logos ... it just seems that once again Logos are not negotiating the terms that allow customers to access the resources that they need. I can even get it on Kindle (!!!).

Martin Folley said:

Is there a way of Logos website filtering out resources that cannot be sold?

If they did that Martin all of us international customers would find out the truth of how much of their catalogue of e-books is actually unavailable to us.

I don't think they want to keep it a secret. The math is pretty easy

This book is a Zondervan book. We have been informed by FL in this forum that HCCP, the owner of both Nelson and Zondervan, refuses to sell eBooks to non-US customers. This mean that the two largest publisher offerings with roughly 6300 eBooks are not available to us for this reason (out of some 38,300 in the eBook store). A certain percentage of IVP Books is not available, too, plus some Publishers don't allow single books for various reasons (such as the current FBOM). My estimate would be a total 7.000 from the eBook store, i.e. 18.2%. Since the offferings nowadays show classic eBooks and Lexham books that come in Logos format, some might rather use the edition:eBook format. This is not (yet?) available as a facet, but logos.com gives a number of books that are available (only) through the eBook store: 30,700, which makes 22.8% unavailable. 

In other words, about every fifth book is not available for international customers, so the feeling that "nothing" is there is wrong. But is is a percentage much too large to not be a nuisance. I think, if we look into different genres, the math doesn't change much. Zondervan & Nelson come out at the top or near the top of the publishers listing and as a significant percentage. There is enough of other publishers, especially in the non-fiction genres - in fact I wish for a negative facet to just exclude this nuisance. Everybody should buy from Abingdon, Wipf&Stock and B&H instead.     

NB.Mick said:

Other than that, it might help to NOT buy the same Zondervan book in Kindle (since to the publisher this probably brings the same royalty, and they save the hassle of working with FL)

That is very doubtful.

Bob has said a couple of times that FL only makes a few cents on each ebook they sell, and that the ebooks branch is therefore not very profitable.

On the other hand, Amazon retains up to 65% of a Kindle sale. Maybe the contarcts that the large publishers negotiate are a bit better, but the standard contract is available publicly on the web, including the standard royalty rates, for everyone to look up. Worst case, publisher and author share 35% of the sale price among themselves.

Still, many publishers have their own ebook stores, which might be the second best option to go for after the Logos/ebook edition, since the publisher and author can retain a whopping 100% of the sale price. (Zondervan does not have this option though...)