Princeton Theological Review (443 issues) - initial price too high

Randal M Lane said:

But at $50, which is the price that it appears most of the bidders have said is the most they will pay, it has not even garnered 20% of the necessary interest to become a genuine pre-pub

So, what will happen if there are half as many new bids at $100?

I've just upped my bid from $50 to $150.  I doubt it's going to ship within the next 12 months or so, even if everyone bids $150.  By January 2014 I will have a 'refreshed' book allowance (the Lord willing) that will hopefully not already be pre-committed (like my January 2013 book allowance is!), so $150 should be 'do-able' and well worth it.  This material looks like it will be very valuable, and doubly so in Logos (as compared to print).

In Him,

Darcy

I bidded 50.

Darcy S. Van Horn said:

I've just upped my bid from $50 to $150.  I doubt it's going to ship within the next 12 months or so, even if everyone bids $150.  By January 2014 I will have a 'refreshed' book allowance (the Lord willing) that will hopefully not already be pre-committed (like my January 2013 book allowance is!), so $150 should be 'do-able' and well worth it.  This material looks like it will be very valuable, and doubly so in Logos (as compared to print).

In Him,

Darcy

Personally, I think DSVH has the proper approach to this particular product.  It appears that it is going to be a long, hard slosh to get it over the %100 threshhold and then, because of its size, I suspect it is going to be months in production.  Bid $150 now, start saving your pennies, and by the time Logos is ready to bill you it shouldn't be a problem. 

Hodge/Hodge, Vos, Machen, Warfield, &etc.   ...    "There were giants in the earth in those days"

Bruce Dunning said:

Since this is not moving very quickly I agree that a new strategy is needed. I raised my bid this morning.

Agreed. I'm in at $100

200

Super Tramp said:

upped to $200

Moi aussi, mais ...

this entire exercise illustrates the weakness of the Community Pricing model.  CP works well for single books and/or wildly popular/highly desired volumes.  But for extremely large collections with limited numbers of bidders, it is difficult if not impossible to know what to bid.  We want to keep the price low for the sake of our own budgets and so that as many people as possible can participate, but we also want to be realistic and get the number and size of bids up to where they are effective so we don't have to watch this set languish for years.

The problem is that we, the bidders, are not privy to certain information such as 1) the number of bidders at any given time and 2) the actual projected cost of development.  This is certainly understandable from Logos point of view but it leaves the bidders blindly swinging at a piñata with little or no idea as to how close or how far away they are.  Earlier comments from Logos employees in this thread are of minimal help except to say that everyone needs a much bigger bat and more people need to be swinging.

Breaking up the collection during CP bidding (as some have suggested/requested) will not help since the total projected cost of development will remain the same (or might even go higher due to a longer development period).  We would just be swinging at three or four different piñatas.

What is needed is some more relevant information to help us 'solve' this currently indeterminate puzzle.  Recognizing that Logos does not want to release specific development cost information, I propose the following: 

Publish two CP benchmarks for bidders to consider. 

First would be what bid is required if the historically highest number of bidders were to bid on this set.  IOW, if the largest number of bidders for any past CP product was, say, 80,000 people on the XYZ Commentary back in 2010, then Logos would use this number to project the necessary bid to get PTR over the line.  No need to publish the number of bidders or any other information ... just give us the value of BIDMAX.  Assuming all of the previous 80,000 people could be persuaded to bid at the BIDMAX level, then BIDMAX would approximate the lowest price that could be expected for this set.

Second would be what bid is required if the historical average number of bidders were to bid on this set.  IOW, take a raw average of the number of bidders for all successful CP products and then use this number to project the necessary bid to get PTR over the line.  Again, no need to publish the number of bidders or any other information ... just give us the value of BIDAVG.  BIDAVG would approximate a more-easily-obtained, reasonable price for the set and, because of the fewer number of bidders it is based on, will be a higher price than for BIDMAX.

In essence,  these two benchmarks have established a bracketed range of reasonable bids.

Mark Smith said:

I just don't think this collection is what bidders want. At $200 it is less than $0.50 a volume, but that is still a lot of money for largely dated material.

This is why my bid is at $50, and it is staying at $50.

bump  

Princeton Theological Review (443 issues)

Beloved said:

Talk is cheap. If you support this resource up your bid NOW!

 It is very easy to see which community pricing bids are way too low. All you need to do is sort the community pricing bids for "Bestselling". This indicates the relative number of bids in order of popularity and you can see that even with high popularity a too low a bid  won't get the resource over the top. There just aren't enough bids and probably won't be at the low price. One $100 bid equals 5 $20 bids.

Robert

alabama24 said:

I'm in! (at $25). 

Where's my hook when I need it[pi][B]

At least $150

Note with present tactics the graph hasn't moved one iota

Robert G. Mettler said:

It also seems that once a peak is established in a resource it is like pulling teeth to convince  people to raise their bid or bid higher than the peak.

What seems so obvious to me is that generally the average bidder has no idea what they're doing; despite having at least two mock ups to give folks a feel of how things work we used the companies's dough to bid on free resources.

One is not asked to pay the dollars you're bidding when you place a bid you're not locked in to a price basically until 30 days after delivery of the resource. One can change their bids up until closing and importantly if your bid is higher than the community bid at closing you still get the resource at the community price.

I propose we have a "Bid In" I want everyone who thinks this resource of proven scholarship is worth seeing in their libraries to bid at least $150 and for the few brave souls who know how to play this game to bid the maximum $450 smacks; I have entered my bid for this amount at this moment. Let's see what happens to the curve.

This works for all CPs and even Pre-pubs; if you change your mind no problem you can renege. 

I promise your bids are in no way unchangeable unless certain limits already mentioned are rendered! 

tom said:

And there are some of us who would like this resource, but who are not willing to pay $100 for some outdated material.  I have said before and I am saying it again, my bid of $50 is all that I am willing to pay for this outdated material.  

Wow Tom,

No disrespect meant. Now, you can hold on to that opinion and help those who are willing to pay more for this "outdated" material.

Would you please allow this to take shape by upping your bid to $100.

You can modify your bid once a new graph is set in motion. Just as an experience.   

Consider it not strange that the canon we revere is "outdated."  

Princeton Theological Review

Edit: I reserve the right to change the opinions expressed in this post until the prerequisite functions are fulfilled [:)] 

i am presently in at 75 and have been for a while... I'll bump that up to 100$ though.

abondservant said:

You know how Logos handles the huge bundles? I forget the name - may have been the baker academic collection. Cost like 3k or something huge like that. However if you were only interested in OT studies, the OT package was 100$, or the NT package was some other price, or Pauline Studies - and so forth.

I wonder if that could be done with some of the major authors on this work in order to get (even a part of it) into production. Then use the dynamic pricing model to encourage people to finish the set .

I want the whole set. I would never bid on a partial set because after the partial was published many would bail out and the full set would never get published. That is probably the reason Zondervan produces their Bundles first and the breaks them up after the Bundle has shipped.

fwiw: I am in at $200 for this resource. Yes, $50 would be nice but it will never happen because there are not enough interested bidders.

Paul-C said:

Personally, I would like to see this broken up into bite-sized pieces.

How big is "bite-sized" and how much per bite are you willing to pay? If they divided it up into 5 parts and you are willing to pay $50 per part, it is cheaper to pay $200 for the whole package. If you think you will get 88 issues for $10, think again.

• The Christian History and Biography  has 99 issues and sells for $150. 
• Themelios  1-37  has 111 issues and sells for $210
• Tabletalk feb 9-Jan 2011  has 264 issues for $300

Each of these collections sell for more than $1 per issue. That would make the Princeton Theological Review go for over $400. I believe it is a good deal for 200 and a great deal for $100.

Super Tramp said:

 If they divided it up into 5 parts and you are willing to pay $50 per part...

For me, this would be ok. Especially if they were spread over say a year. I appreciate other's mileage may vary.

tom said:

my bid of $50 is all that I am willing to pay for this outdated material.  

You must know how it irks me everytime you use this material as outdated. As if spiritual matters are better if they are newer.

tom said:

Evan Boardman said:

You must know how it irks me everytime you use this material as outdated. As if spiritual matters are better if they are newer.

For me, there is a difference between academic resources and spiritual resources.  Princeton is academic, and these resources for academic purposes is clearly outdated. 

Yes the nature is academic, but not the subject. The primary resource's these men use is scripture.Does scripture become dated?

Evan Boardman said:

The primary resource's these men use is scripture.Does scripture become dated?

No, but some biblical scholarship does. The 'Holy Ghost Greek' theory is pretty outdated by now, for example, and I would hope we all consider the more or less open anti-semitism in many older works to be very outdated. (No idea to what extent these are present in this resource. Just using them as examples.)

fgh said:

The 'Holy Ghost Greek' theory is pretty outdated by now

This is a good example of something being outdated. But I know nothing in this collection that could be compared to it or be called outdated.

papa_gowgow said:

Evan Boardman said:

 I know nothing in this collection that could be compared to it or be called outdated.

Agreed,

But that doesn't answer the main question, which is how valuable are these resources to each one of us personally. -------- but I respect those for whose blood it's getting too rich...

 

Because I have given up hope of this coming out of Community Pricing:

Here is a file that links to all of the Princeton Theological Review articles at Princeton Theological Seminary. You can do a general  text search on the resource to find topical articles of interest. The articles will open in your browser when you are online and click on them. Compile it as a Journal PB. . Not perfect, but it works.

2475.Journals of Princeton Theological Seminary.docx

Enjoy,

Robert

Thanks Robert.  Works great.