Bible software companies should consider UltraViolet model

To clarify, it would be up to each Bible software company to take the basic text of a book and enhance it however they want. The tagging and software capabilities they provide are what would entice users to pay to use licenses on their platform. The better the platform, the more attractive it would be to users.

It's even possible that there would be a very low cost platform (maybe free to use with any licenses purchased from publishers) that was run by users (sort of like Wikipedia) that provided little more than a browser based version of the text and some tagging done by volunteers. At a later point, a user may decide that they want more advanced features and then pay to use their licenses on a platform like Logos.

And not all Bible software platforms will offer all the books that a user may have licenses to. For example, though I may have licenses to books that I use on Logos, those same books may not be available on Accordance or OliveTree. Therefore, I would most likely stick to Logos because that is the only place I can use those licenses.

I should also ask: if nearly all the major movie/media companies, which are notorious for massive egos, could work together with the some of the largest retailers in the country (Walmart, Target, Best Buy - all competitors, mind you) to make UltraViolet happen, how could the much smaller Bible software industry (largely filled with Christians) not be able to cooperate to do something similar?

Bill & George,

I don't want to drag you into another tagging/standards discussion, but maybe I don't understand it well enough to know how it pertains to my suggestion.

I am merely suggesting that a user can use a single digital license on any participating Bible software platform. However, this does not mean that there would be any communication between platforms. I still would not able to follow a link in a book I own on the Logos platform to another book I own in the Accordance platform. It would certainly be great if you could do that at some point, but that is not what I'm suggesting. This is really only about freeing my digital licenses from being captive to one particular Bible software platform. The only thing that moves between platforms is the content license - nothing else.

Maybe working together on something like this (ie. the ability to use a single digital license on multiple platforms) would be a needed intermediate step before the Bible software companies would work together on something like standards.

NÖ

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Sogol, Your suggestion would mean more software development efforts - something which is not always easy because of many reasons.

Most publishers would not agree on content being available in a web-browser.

It doesn't have to be available in a web-browser, though that's a possibility. And doesn't Logos already offer web access through Biblia.com?

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How would limiting which books each company offers, work?

It's up to each Bible software company to decide which books to offer. If I own a license to a book that is available on Logos but not on Accordance, then I can't access the book on Accordance. The attractiveness of a software platform will certainly be affected by the selection they offer, just as it is now.

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What agreement could be reached about who would be responsible for releasing new titles?

I'm not sure I understand this. The publishers decide when a digital license is available and after that the Bible software companies decide when to release them on their platform. If publishers want to do exclusive deals with particular Bible software companies then that would detract from the attractiveness of this model.

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Would community pricing and pre-publication pricing be gone, and if not who would be in charge of those systems?

I don't think pre-pub would be affected at all. With community pricing, if a title is still under copyright then it works fine with this system. If a Bible software company produces their own version of a work no longer under copyright then there isn't really a publisher license that a user could own, unless of course the Bible software company acts as a publisher and makes their content available to Bible software companies (assuming it is legal for them to charge for that).

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At times, negotiations between ALL Bible study software companies involved and publishers about the price for a title, would consume A LOT of human resources. So some titles would be more expensive or unprofitable with this kind of co-operation instead of each company having their proprietary format.

The publishers would set a standard price for the digital license. The Bible software companies could mark it up if they want to try and sell it that way, but that doesn't make a lot of sense because they are really making their money on the platform fees they charge.

As for the resources required, every industry has to invest in new innovations if they want to stay relevant. I'm sure it took a ton of time and money for all the media and retail companies to get UltraViolet up and running, but they knew that was the direction digital content was going.

And companies can still have their own proprietary formats for the books. The only thing that is moving between platforms is the intangible license, not and files.

Denise said:

I think Sogol's idea is absolutely great. We're talking 'licenses'; not the literal resource files.

One big reason I hold and buy for Libronix is 'licenses'. Logos Inc gets caught in a car wreck? Unfortunate, but my licenses aren't a function of whatever contracts Logos has in the aftermath.

Sogol's idea solves much of the risk in 'digital' books (as long as other resellers offer the content).

I think your points are exactly right, Denise.

Licenses to content should not be captive to one particular platform. Such an arrangement will make less and less sense as time goes on, and I think that's what the movie/media industry realized with UltraViolet.

And you are right - there is no integration of resource files required. The only thing that moves across platforms are intangible digital licenses.

George Somsel said:

The ONLY COMMONALITY between Logos resources and other companies' resources is the text.  They might be able to transcribe the resource once and share it, but the tagging is proprietary to each company.

You're a very advanced user, George. So you probably don't consider the other companies' products as major competitors to Logos. However, for many users, I'm sure Logos is competing with Accordance and the rest for the customers' dollars.

George Somsel said:

Sogol said:

I don't know how all the details work, but when you purchase a movie from, say Vudu.com (Walmart), it immediately shows up as a license I own in my UltraViolet account. Then any other movie service linked to my UltraViolet account can see that I own that license and grant me access to it on their service.

The hardware to play a movie is produced by companies dedicated to the production of hardware.  Movies are produced by companies which format them to conform to that technology.  Bible software varies in its tagging according to which company produces a resource though the resource is something which is (generally) produced by a print publisher.  The only thing the bible software companies have in common is the resource as produced by the print publisher.  You are comparing apples and oranges.  It wouldn't work.

I don't see how it matters here if differences exist in the tagging or technologies used by the different Bible software companies. Each Bible software company that chooses to offer a given resource can make whatever enhancements it wants to the basic text, such as tagging. The tagging in a given resource will surely differ at least somewhat between the different software companies, but that doesn't matter because the software companies are not integrating their technology with each other. All they are doing with each other is sharing, through the consortium, what content licenses a user owns from publishers.

alabama24 said:

How would Logos make money?

The same way they do now. The only difference is that when you buy a resource from Logos your purchase would give you two different licenses (one from the publisher/consortium and one from Logos) instead of just the one license from Logos.

Though it would be invisible to users, a simplified example of your $100 purchase from Logos goes from being:

$75 to the publisher and $25 in Logos markup = one license for Logos

to

$75 = publisher/consortium content license and $25 = Logos platform license

" rel="nofollow">Keep Smiling 4 Jesus said:

Curious about publisher profit incentive for a consortium ?

This is an important question. As I mentioned earlier, it seems like the majority of the benefits accrue to the end user. However, some points that may be enticing to publishers include:

1) This model could further accelerate adoption and sale of eBooks. I have heard many people say they don't want to move to eBooks because there is no universal standard, and they worry that they lose their libraries if the technology provider goes under or becomes irrelevant. This model removes that worry because you own your book licenses independent of any company or technology.

2) A small portion of the platform fee could be designated to the publisher. This could give publishers some additional revenue long after the sale of the initial licenses.

3) The harsh reality of life in the ultra-competitive worlds of media and technology these days is that if you wait too long to give consumers what they want, you can bet that someone else will be working hard at beating you to it. Thus anyone who wants to sustain their relevance would be wise to consider that this is the direction that things appear to be heading, and there is a very good chance that end users will eventually get what they want...... one way or another.

toughski said:

This proposal is in essence a change to Logos philosophy. They always said "our software is free, you only pay for resources". I have never understood why they are so adamant about NOT charging for software. Customers still pay, whether you call them "resource surcharge" (over Amazon's price for example) or "additional software capability" (tagging, datasets, indexing and such).

I guess, once consumers figure out that if they own 13,000 titles and each has been surcharged even 50 cents - it makes for a very expensive bible Software application. However, once you figure out their support and continual enhancement of each resource, it might not sound too bad.

Under UV-type paradigm bible software companies charge BOTH for basic resource license (basically plain text - what the original content creator came up with) and for their proprietary tagging, formatting, etc. but separately.

How would Logos make money? the same as always! But allowing a plain text (as created by authors) resource to be displayed within Logos platform would bring in a lot of additional customers:

imagine having any Kindle resource on Logos. Just as text. no thrills. What do you think most people would do? Once they taste the power of Logos, they would upgrade.

it is a win-win-win for rights holders, publishers and consumers (just follow the music industry and video industry), but is not without some legal and technical challenges. The longer I live the better I understand that businesses are very slow to change unless their (business) life depends on it.

You bring up all kinds of good points, toughski.

I had not thought about it, but you mention a great idea. It would be very cool if a company like Logos would let users who own a content license only (with no platform license) view their content on the Logos platform for free but only get access to the text - none of the additional features like tagging. An example would be someone who owns a Kindle book but wants to consider using that content license on Logos. Thus Logos would just function as an eReader for such users and nothing more. Once they got comfortable with Logos, they might upgrade by purchasing the platform license. This is consistent with the ever prevalent "freemium" model nowadays where you get only the most basic features for free but pay for anything more.

You also bring to mind another important consideration I had not mentioned. In the ideal world, all the various eBook platforms and publishers would form one big consortium to make this happen. Thus the Bible software companies would be working together with Amazon Kindle, Google Play, B&N Nook, Apple, etc. Likewise, it wouldn't just be the Christian publishers, but all the major publishing houses. Since we don't know where these guys are at with an idea like this (or at least I don't), and the Bible software companies probably aren't really on their radar right now, I was suggesting that the Bible software companies could just start to work together on something like this now.

Of course, there is one big risk I worry about: the Bible software companies form a consortium, and then later on all the big guys form a much bigger consortium that operates very differently than the Bible software consortium. The result is that the Bible software consortium has to do one of the following:

1) Try to figure out a way to link the two consortiums (something the big guys might not be interested in, and even if they were the legal/financial/technical integration could be a big headache)

2) Operate as an independent consortium (the downside here is that the books you buy on Kindle would not work on Logos and vice versa)

3) Dissolve the Bible software consortium and have all the companies independently join the bigger consortium (in which case it may have just been better for the Bible software companies to have waited for the bigger consortium to form)

Rosie Perera said:

I see your points too, but I think Logos currently takes a much bigger cut than this "platform fee" model would give them (perhaps close to 50% though I don't know what kind of a deal they work out from publisher to publisher; I'm sure it varies), as it's quite a lot of work for them to turn a published work into a Logos resource. Let's suppose a resource is one that we ought to be willing to pay $110 to buy (regardless of how it comes to us). In your model, Logos would get $10 of that, and $100 of it would go to the publisher. Logos couldn't afford to do all the work they do for that little margin per resource sale.

Let's suppose further that in order to stay in business Logos needs to get a minimum of $50 of that $110 product. Under the current negotiated arrangement, Logos sells that product and remits $60 to the publisher, keeping the remainder. Presumably, other companies have similar costs of doing business to Logos, so the "platform fee" would need to be more on the order of $50 for this product for them too. Then anyone who buys this product on more than one platform is going to end up paying $160 for it. Maybe a bit less if some low-end company can push the resource out the door faster by cutting corners.

I think MOST of the difference you're seeing in price of resources between company A and company B is not the different base price from the publisher. If the publishers are good negotiators, they are going to get their $60 for that digital resource no matter which software company is selling it to the user, company A or company B. So what you're seeing is simply that Logos charges more for the work they do of converting it to Logos format than other companies charge for converting it to theirs.

I know I've done a lot of "supposing" here, and I could be completely off base with my numbers, and you might have hit on a model that could work. In other words, even if the publisher's cut is significantly lower than you were estimating, it still would be good if we only had to pay that amount ONCE if we bought the resource from multiple software companies. But I think you'd find that even fewer people would be willing to double pay for ANY resources if the "platform fee" is quite a larger percentage of the cost of the resource than you guessed it was. Which makes this whole suggestion kind of moot. A nice idea, but all the work it would take negotiating to make it happen would be costly and time consuming and for what possible gain to the companies in question. I think they pretty much like the way it works now.

So, if you're right that the labor of Logos or another software company makes up only about 10% of the cost of digital resources, then maybe you're onto something! I do concede I could be way wrong about this all.

I think you're right, Rosie. In the end, the feasibility of this model depends on what the actual numbers look like. Unfortunately, I don't know what they are, and it's quite possible that knowledge of those could easily render this model unattractive for the time being. However, I did at least want to put this idea out there because, even if it doesn't fly under current circumstances, I would hope that the exercise of probing it might yield some helpful thoughts and insights about what new directions Logos could take its business model.