Stop converting books from Vyrso to Logos!!!!

Elnwood, I don't know if you're aware, but this is actually a great deal *if* you've bought the Vyrso book already. You don't have to pay again for it, you get the upgrade to a Logos edition for free.

So I guess the moral of the story is, stretch now to buy whatever is on your wishlist from Vyrso, because you never know if it might become a Logos book at some time in the future and cost more.

Logos could do a better job of informing people when Vyrso books are going to be upgraded to Logos editions, so that people have one last chance to buy them at the Vyrso price.

FWIW, this upgrading to Logos has been done on a very tiny fraction of the book in the Vyrso catalog, and I am guessing that will remain the case. Most of the Vyrso books don't make any sense to convert to Logos editions.

Also, for another perspective, see this thread where people are giving their criteria for when a book should be a Logos edition instead of a Vyrso ebook. I've listed several books which I think belong as Logos editions, because of their features (commentary, calendar devotional, etc.), in that thread:

http://community.logos.com/forums/p/71989/501372.aspx#501372

elnwood said:

My wishlist for Vyrso is empty, because ... well, I don't think Vyrso has a wishlist feature.

I was speaking metaphorically, about your virtual wishlist. As soon as I notice a book in Vyrso that I might like to buy, since there is no wishlist feature, and since I have a fairly large book buying budget, I buy it immediately. I realize that might not be your situation, though. In which case I can sympathize with your aggravation at missing out on Vyrso prices because you couldn't afford to buy the book at the time and then found it to be priced out of your affordability range once it's in Logos.

elnwood said:

I'm all for free upgrades from Vyrso to Logos. What I don't like is that the Logos prices and bundling that come with it!

Agreed that Logos should not force bundling on books that have previously been available as stand-alone in Vyrso. But they do have to recoup their costs for tagging, so I can understand them needing to charge more for the single volume than a straight etext which they do nothing to upon receiving the digital files from the publisher (on those, when they sell them at Vyrso prices, they are barely breaking even).

elnwood said:

What it comes down to for me is that if it's a book that I'm going to read through, I won't buy it in Logos. It's just too expensive, I don't need tagging, and it's easier and cheaper to buy and read it on an e-ink reader or a hard copy.

Makes total sense if you don't need the Logos tagging or the integration with your Library (full library searching, for example; right click to look up words, etc.). In fact, I do that often with read-through books that I don't already have in Logos and that are cheaper in Kindle, or that aren't yet available in Logos or Vyrso. I find the Kindle reader (for Android, the platform I use it on most often) better/faster for simply reading through a book and perhaps some single-color highlighting. It doesn't have the great search features (search across whole library) and library management features (user tagging) that Logos has, but for just reading it can't be beat.

I think the whole collections model is untenable for topical areas like this particular one (Global Missions). It's one thing to bundle all the volumes of a commentary set together and sell that for a discount off the price of buying every volume individually. Or a really high quality reference collection such as Essential IVP Reference Collection or Zondervan Bible Reference Bundle. Or even (possibly) all the books by a given author who is an author people are likely to want to collect all the works of (Calvin, Spurgeon, Luther, etc.). But when it comes to a contemporary topical subject, bundling so many titles together (20 in the case of the Global Missions Collection) is counter-productive. I could see maybe 3 or 4 max. But if I'm wanting to learn more about global missions, there is no way I'm going to shell out for 20 books about that topic.

Evidently there are some people who are missions junkies, as evidenced by the fact that there are any orders at all on this collection (it's sitting at about 25%). But why should everyone else who is not a missions junkie (which I'm guessing is most of us) have to wait months or more until this collection is unbundled to get the one or two titles in it that they might be interested in?

The only title in that collection I'm interested in is A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story by Michael Goheen. I might not ever buy it, because to do so would require making a note to myself to come back and look for it after it's unbundled. There are simply way too many books in the Logos catalog now to keep track of all my "maybe I'll buy this someday if it ever gets unbundled" wish list items. So it means a potential loss of revenue for Logos that they're not making it available as a stand-alone from the get-go.

In summary, I agree with the earlier posters (elnwood and Tom Reynolds) that arbitrary forced bundling is not good and should be eliminated. If it's not required by the publishers (and why would it be? they don't do that for Kindle books), then stop it! Especially these huge topical bundles.

'Please don't listen to the poster.'  Huh?  Logos blindly listens?

What is it about star-people that seems to encourage this. Yesterday another star person was busily racking up points on the current political issues.

Rosie Perera said:

But when it comes to a contemporary topical subject, bundling so many titles together (20 in the case of the Global Missions Collection) is counter-productive.

I totally agree with this.  I fondly remember when I used to browse the new book and pre-pub lists to discover new single titles that I would buy.  This rarely happens anymore

Denise said:

What is it about star-people that seems to encourage this.

Someday, all the Sneetches will forgot about stars and whether They had one, or not, upon thars.

Brian Williams said:

I'll be sure to talk about your different arguments with the rest of the team.

Thanks. All I'm asking is keep the Vyrso title available until the Logos version is available singly. We will buy more books that way.

alabama24 said:

Super Tramp said:

All I'm asking is keep the Vyrso title available until the Logos version is available singly.

I think Brian was trying to say that a new contract was signed, negating logos ability to sell via Vyrso. The contract structures are different.

And I'm saying it was poorly negotiated. Don't make that mistake again. It is presumably everybody's desire to sell books (except maybe Moody [6].) All potential sales are gutted when they deep-sixed Piper's book in a Pre-Pub. We can not even place a Pre-Pub in our wish lists. There is no way to keep track of the Piper book without ordering 19 other books. Does Piper really want to carry 19 other books on his back for 8 months?

Bad negotiating, bad contract.

Jacob Hantla said:

For my part, please don't listen to the original poster. I love it when my books get Logos'ed. THen the book I got cheap on Vyrso where I'm annoyed that my links don't work are all nice for free. So as long as you've already purchased the book you want, you are fine. 

I do understand his annoyance, however. I do think that when this happens, the books should probably be individually for sale. 

It is interested that on the 9 marks collection, the resources that are on prepub to be Logos'ed are still available in Vyrso. You can purchase them now and then they will be Logos'ed later (you save big time on what you're interested in). They did not do this with Let the Nations Be Glad, however. 

i just don't get it, why can't we keep both. If you Jacob in this case like Logos edition, good, pay hundreds of $$$ for collections with a better quality, but if I want just to read the book, why can't I just order from Vyrso cheaper one.

People vote with their wallets. What's wrong to have both? 

Super Tramp said:

Wild Eagle said:

i just don't get it, why can't we keep both.

We CAN have both if the contract is written that way.

I don't know of any books that are simultaneously available in both Vyrso and Logos. I don't think Logos has much incentive to write the contracts this way. If they have to do the work to convert it to a Logos edition book anyway, why not get more money for it all the time? I'm guessing the publishers would probably be on this side of the issue too. Unless both could be convinced they'd sell an awful lot more copies of the book if they had the cheaper option available.

I think the main reason they're not likely to want to make both available simultaneously is that having a Vyrso edition available too would eat into their sales of the Logos edition, making it harder for them to recoup the costs of converting it to that more fully integrated digital format. If they do all this work to make it into a Logos edition, and only 10% of users by the Logos version, while 90% buy the Vyrso edition that gives them virtually no margin, they aren't going to be happy they put all that work into it.

Super Tramp said:

Rosie Perera said:

I think the main reason they're not likely to want to make both available simultaneously is that having a Vyrso edition available too would eat into their sales of the Logos edition, making it harder for them to recoup the costs of converting it to that more fully integrated digital format.

I'm not asking for them to be available simultaneously. They can pull the Vyrso edition as soon as the Logos edition is made available. The way it stands now we will have to wait 8 months and buy 19 additional volumes we might not want just to get the one book. That puts a lot of pressure on Piper to sell 19 books he did not write. It also forces us to go to the Christian book store and buy a paper copy if we want to read it now.

Context, context, ST. I was replying to your response to Wild Eagle, who wanted both to be available simultaneously. After that bit you quoted, he went on to say "If you Jacob in this case like Logos edition, good, pay hundreds of $$$ for collections with a better quality, but if I want just to read the book, why can't I just order from Vyrso cheaper one."

I'm totally with you that it's silly to pull the Vyrso edition as soon as a pre-pub shows up for a Logos edition. The only way I'd understand them doing this would be if they'd had it in pre-pub in Vyrso, and it hadn't yet shipped there, and they decided before even releasing the product to upgrade it to a Logos edition. But in that case I would expect that anyone who had already ordered the pre-pub while it was a Vyrso pre-pub would be grandfathered in and not have to pay the higher Logos edition pre-pub price.