Buying the same book AGAIN

David V · 2025-02-03T00:08:01+00:00

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So I already own close to 150 theology and Christian study textbooks from the last several years at seminary. I am new to logos, and have already invested a lot of money. However, I am finally realizing that there is no easy way to get my ebook purchases into Logos without converting them to docx and painstakingly formatting them.

Is my only alternative to buy them again? If so, this is a real bummer…

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John

https://community.logos.com/discussion/246008/buying-the-same-book-again

That is the sad truth in the software publishing world. Each software company sell a license to you to read and use an electronic title in THEIR FORMAT.

Software company B and C do not care about your license from company A, and neither does the original copyright owner. And they protect their own file formats from being read by any of their competitors software, using encryption and DRM (digital rights management) to ensure that no one can ever read their proprietary format. This has never been for the benefit of the user. It has been argued that it is necessary to prevent piracy and illegal copying and use of the resources. This is party true, it does make it harder for pirates to make copies. But the pirates always break whatever protection is utilized.

While being legal, the current practice is unethical, immoral and unchristian. A Christian worldview would require the original copyright holder to be compensated. And for the software company to be compensated. But it would never require payment to be required repeatedly to use the exact same resource.

Many years ago, there was a group of people who recognized that these practices were unchristian, and they attempted to implement an industry-wide solution. Files could still be encrypted and use DRM, but would be readable by any companies software. This new concept was introduced in 1995 and was called the STEP format. Several publishers released books in this format, including Zondervan and Navpress.

The Wikipedia page on STEP says that E-sword, Quickverse and WORDsearch can still read STEP files. Not sure about Quickverse, but WORDsearch was shutdown after being bought by Logos. I think Zondervan also gave up on publishing its own software also … ?

The format died out because the largest players in the market refused to adopt it.

I have purchased and re-purchased many tiles over and over again. I own titles in Bibleworks, Accordance and Logos. And some of them I have in print. So I have paid for the same resources repeatedly.

It would be nice to think that someday this situation might change. It easily could if enough people got behind the effort. If DRM today is secure and powerful enough to create digital currency, surely it is powerful enough to create a digital license for any given resource that is not controlled by an individual company.

P.S. - I forgot to mention I also own many of the same titles in my Kindle library 😎

David V

Wow. Just wow. Thank you for confirming my fears with such a comprehensive answer. So the current solution to this is the application of money. Got it.

MJ. Smith

@John

While being legal, the current practice is unethical, immoral and unchristian. A Christian worldview would require the original copyright holder to be compensated. And for the software company to be compensated. But it would never require payment to be required repeatedly to use the exact same resource.

This falls into a "your theology" category which I should not run into in the forums. And yes, Musk re: Lutheran Family Services has put me in a very intolerant mood.

Yasmin Stephen

If the books are available in the Logos store, the Print Library feature can help you somewhat (i.e., search results only) - check here for more information.

The feature is available in the Logo Pro (and up) subscription, and it was previously available in the Logos 10 feature sets (Logos Gold/Full Feature set).

John

@MJ. Smith

This falls into a "your theology" category which I should not run into in the forums

I'm not quite sure what this means. And I'm afraid to ask you to elaborate 😂

John

@David V

If you still have student status, you should take advantage of Logos academic discounts.

https://www.logos.com/academic-discount

Tom Reynolds

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1356329#Comment_1356329

The irony is that her response also falls into the "your theology" category which I should not run into in the forums. Don't worry about it, that's Martha and we love her anyway :-).

Aaron Hamilton

If Logos didn't care about the fact that users own resources in other formats they would never have developed the Print Library feature. Being able to search through owned resources that exist in other formats is very helpful.

Yasmin Stephen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1356346#Comment_1356346

We (I and the over 800 books I’ve added) love the feature.