Geographical availablity
Not sure if it's a system error, but a lot of books in my Faithlife ebooks wish lists are suddenly showing as not available in my region. I hope this is just a system error and not publishers removing Logos' ability to supply resources outside the USA.
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I'm seeing this across my wishlists as well, and I'm also thinking it's a system error, especially as the problem involves various publishers. I can't imagine all these different publishers simultaneously deciding to halt ebook sales outside the US; not impossible, but unlikely.
It would be nice if this glitch (hopefully!) was a signal of work towards opening up previous geo-restricted books ... well, it's morning in my corner of the world and a good time for being optimistic 😛
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Disappointingly the social media team tell me the geographical availablity is set by the publishers, so it's not a glitch. I do find it incredible though that seemingly so many publishers changed their distribution criteria at the same time.
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Paul Caneparo said:
I do find it incredible though that seemingly so many publishers changed their distribution criteria at the same time.
It may be an industry association decision.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Paul Caneparo said:
Disappointingly the social media team tell me the geographical availablity is set by the publishers, so it's not a glitch. I do find it incredible though that seemingly so many publishers changed their distribution criteria at the same time.
Well, this is upsetting. There I'm thinking it's getting better but it's actually getting worse! And why target ebooks specifically? I had two Titus Kennedy books in my wishlist, one ebook and one Logos edition; both are from Harvest House but now the ebook is no longer available to me but the Logos edition still is. And this is not the only example of the same publisher behaving differently for ebooks vs Logos editions - what gives??
Btw, which social media team, Logos's? Frankly, I would only accept this as not being a glitch if Logos people come here and say so, because such a move by so many different publishers at the same time makes no sense.
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Yasmin Stephen said:
And why target ebooks specifically?
I would suspect that ebooks being peddled by international sellers have slowly grown into a major problem for the correct distribution of funds as international sellers encroach on the geographically limited territories of the smaller publishers ... and that that larger publishers who have contracts with the ebook sellers are syphoning off revenue from the smaller publishers ... differences in the contracts may also affect the authors and the copyright holders of the graphics .
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Paul Caneparo said:
Btw, which social media team, Logos's? Frankly, I would only accept this as not being a glitch if Logos people come here and say so, because such a move by so many different publishers at the same time makes no sense.
I can confirm this not a glitch. That being said, we are aware of these limitations and are actively working on finding a better long term solution. There is not a set timeline for this project but we work hard every day to make sure we can get as much content to our international audiences as we can.
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Mitch Snyder (Faithlife) said:
I can confirm this not a glitch.
Well, I've accepted it but I'm very disappointed 😞
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Yasmin Stephen said:Mitch Snyder (Faithlife) said:
I can confirm this not a glitch.
Well, I've accepted it but I'm very disappointed 😞
I'm just glad I've got a pretty big library already. I haven't had a chance to go through my (extensive) pre-pubs list to see which ones are no longer available to me now.
Anyone have a list of which publishers have made this switch recently? Or even a list of several of them that have?
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Rosie Perera said:Yasmin Stephen said:Mitch Snyder (Faithlife) said:
I can confirm this not a glitch.
Well, I've accepted it but I'm very disappointed 😞
I'm just glad I've got a pretty big library already. I haven't had a chance to go through my (extensive) pre-pubs list to see which ones are no longer available to me now.
Anyone have a list of which publishers have made this switch recently? Or even a list of several of them that have?
I seem to have lost access within Faithlife ebooks to books by the following publishers, that were available to me until last week.
Abingdon Press
B&H Books
Bethany House
BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
Cascade Books
Charisma House
Fortress Press
Harvest House Publishers
IVP
Wipf and Stock
Worthy BooksOf course that's in addition to Zondervan and a couple of others that were previously restricted too.
The restriction may not cover the whole catalogue of these publishers. I merely checked which books in my Faithlife ebooks wish lists were showing as unavailable to me.
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Mitch Snyder (Faithlife) said:
Paul Caneparo said:
Btw, which social media team, Logos's? Frankly, I would only accept this as not being a glitch if Logos people come here and say so, because such a move by so many different publishers at the same time makes no sense.
I can confirm this not a glitch. That being said, we are aware of these limitations and are actively working on finding a better long term solution. There is not a set timeline for this project but we work hard every day to make sure we can get as much content to our international audiences as we can.
I hope you are successful in rectifying this. I'm sure your business model includes your international customers. It's very disappointing to see so many books no longer available outside the USA. Thankfully this only seems to be within the Faithlife ebooks store, although that's a minor consolation.
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MJ. Smith said:Paul Caneparo said:
I do find it incredible though that seemingly so many publishers changed their distribution criteria at the same time.
It may be an industry association decision.
That may be true, although I still have access to these books through another US based Bible software company. Whilst it could be argued they're still to implement a change, I've had access to Harper Collins resources through them for years.
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Paul Caneparo said:
I seem to have lost access within Faithlife ebooks to books by the following publishers, that were available to me until last week.
Abingdon Press
B&H Books
Bethany House
BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
Cascade Books
Charisma House
Fortress Press
Harvest House Publishers
IVP
Wipf and Stock
Worthy BooksOf course that's in addition to Zondervan and a couple of others that were previously restricted too.
Oh no! The ones I've highlighted above are among my favorite publishers, as is Zondervan.
But where are you located? If Google serves me well, UK? I'm in Canada, and I am not seeing those publishers blocked here.
Still, it's troubling to hear that you can't buy books from any of them from where you are.
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Rosie Perera said:Paul Caneparo said:
I seem to have lost access within Faithlife ebooks to books by the following publishers, that were available to me until last week.
Abingdon Press
B&H Books
Bethany House
BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
Cascade Books
Charisma House
Fortress Press
Harvest House Publishers
IVP
Wipf and Stock
Worthy BooksOf course that's in addition to Zondervan and a couple of others that were previously restricted too.
Oh no! The ones I've highlighted above are among my favorite publishers, as is Zondervan.
But where are you located? If Google serves me well, UK? I'm in Canada, and I am not seeing those publishers blocked here.
Still, it's troubling to hear that you can't buy books from any of them from where you are.
Yes currently living in the UK. I'm delighted if you still have access to those publishers. I seem to have wrongly assumed the restrictions were as per Zondervan ebooks.
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Paul Caneparo said:
I seem to have lost access within Faithlife ebooks to books by the following publishers, that were available to me until last week.
Abingdon Press
B&H Books
Bethany House
BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
Cascade Books
Charisma House
Fortress Press
Harvest House Publishers
IVP
Wipf and Stock
Worthy BooksOf course that's in addition to Zondervan and a couple of others that were previously restricted too.
That covers nearly all the publishers I remember buying from with the exception of David C Cook where the eBook I looked at yesterday was newly restricted, too :-(
Have joy in the Lord!
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Other than some of those already listed, I found these from my wishlists:
[quote]
Moody Publishers
Pickwick Publications
Resource PublicationsIt's little use trying to make any sense of this development because the whole mess is not even consistent:
I thought publication date was a factor, but I found a 2009 ebook from the same publisher which is also geo-restricted. I give up 🤷🏽♀️
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Could it be that these ebook problems may be related to Faithlife's efforts to screen out inappropriate books? The process of filtering out these books seems a bit complex and may be unintentionally resulting in other ebooks being removed. After all, the only common denominator I have identified is that they are all ebooks.
This comment got me thinking along those lines:
Bob Pritchett said:Bottom Line: If we could offer every ebook Amazon offers, but only if we did offer every ebook Amazon offers, should we? And if so, how?
Taken from this thread: Do you want every ebook in the world in Logos? - Logos Forums
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Aaron Hamilton said:
Could it be that these ebook problems may be related to Faithlife's efforts to screen out inappropriate books? The process of filtering out these books seems a bit complex and may be unintentionally resulting in other ebooks being removed. After all, the only common denominator I have identified is that they are all ebooks.
I thought so at first, which was why I was hopeful it was a glitch (like maybe they turned off something by mistake), but ^Mitch has confirmed this is a deliberate move. Also, these books are still in the store, just not available to some of us. And these are all 'Christian' publishers from what I can see, so I can't figure how their books would get mistakenly tagged as inappropriate, whether by BISAC codes or whatever tool they're building.
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Thank you all for your feedback. As I said previously, we are continuing to work on this and understand the desire to get this content to as many people as possible. I will say, these restrictions are not based on BISAC code but by the rights to sell in a given country by the publisher. They are also handled at the resource level and not by the publisher. So that's why you'll see some books as restricted and others as available.
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I think all the books I lost access to are available again. 😃
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Paul Caneparo said:
I think all the books I lost access to are available again. 😃
You beat me to the punch Paul. We did indeed do some work behind the scenes and many of the impacted titles should be available again. Our team was able to implement a change that allowed us to move past the previous issues.
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Mitch Snyder (Faithlife) said:Paul Caneparo said:
I think all the books I lost access to are available again. 😃
You beat me to the punch Paul. We did indeed do some work behind the scenes and many of the impacted titles should be available again. Our team was able to implement a change that allowed us to move past the previous issues.
That's great! It would be nice if the publishers would work with you to extend their Amazon ebook sale pricing to Faithlife ebooks too. It's a bit hit and miss. I rarely buy ebooks from Amazon unless Faithlife ebooks don't carry it or unless it's a book in Logos and the price is simply too good to pass up. Hopefully the publishers will see a benefit in working more consistently with Logos on ebook sales than they appear to at present.
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Mitch Snyder (Faithlife) said:
We did indeed do some work behind the scenes and many of the impacted titles should be available again. Our team was able to implement a change that allowed us to move past the previous issues.
Thank you.
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Mitch Snyder (Faithlife) said:Paul Caneparo said:
I think all the books I lost access to are available again. 😃
You beat me to the punch Paul. We did indeed do some work behind the scenes and many of the impacted titles should be available again. Our team was able to implement a change that allowed us to move past the previous issues.
Thanks, Mitch!
Have joy in the Lord!
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This seems like the only thread that explains part of my problem. I'm in Canada and, as of July 2024, I am able to buy "Discovering the mind of a woman" by Ken Nair through Logos as an audiobook, but not the ebook. However, I'm able to purchase it as an ebook through Amazon Kindle. As an audiobook on Audible as well. It doesn't make sense to me. I could buy it as a Kindle book, but, then, I loose all the Logos advantages. While I find this very difficult, I aknowledge that there are worse problems in the world...!
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Sylvio Janelle said:
This seems like the only thread that explains part of my problem. I'm in Canada and, as of July 2024, I am able to buy "Discovering the mind of a woman" by Ken Nair through Logos as an audiobook, but not the ebook. However, I'm able to purchase it as an ebook through Amazon Kindle. As an audiobook on Audible as well. It doesn't make sense to me. I could buy it as a Kindle book, but, then, I loose all the Logos advantages. While I find this very difficult, I aknowledge that there are worse problems in the world...!
I believe it's to do with the licencing agreement between Logos and publishers - and those publishers agreements to sell certain books in certain markets - i.e. a book may be published by different publishers in different markets.
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