Community Pricing Data Crunching - Price Predictions!

I love Community Pricing! It helps us offer more content by offering you the lowest possible prices. The more orders, the lower the price!

Following are the top-ten most popular CP titles by number of bids. Some of these are 'stuck' on price points that will likely never make it, so I've calculated the actual bid price we would need, based on present orders, to put the title into production. If you really want to see this title available, you need to change your bid.

A Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols.) -- $32
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (13 vols.) -- $88
The Catholic Encyclopedia (17 vols.) -- $130
English Bible Collection (27 vols.) -- $87
Dictionary of Christian Antiquities (2 vols.) -- $17
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities -- $15
The Works of John Gill (21 vols.) -- $88
Princeton Theological Review (443 issues) -- $406
Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary -- $32
Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (12 vols.) -- $211
300 Illustrations for Preachers -- $10
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (2 vols.) -- $45
E. A. Sophocles Collection (4 vols.) -- $26
Mormon Studies Collection (45 vols.) -- $227
Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature -- $41
The Century Dictionary (12 vols.) -- $171
The Speaker's Commentary (13 vols.) -- $104
An English-Greek Dictionary -- $25
The Sacred Books of the East (50 vols.) -- $397
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (3 vols.) -- $104

Thousands of people have participated in CP. I did some playing around to see what would happen if everyone who right now has a bid in on the most popular title (Hastings' A Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols.)) were to place a bid on every listed title. What is the lowest the prices could go?

50 titles would go to $1. 43 would go to $2. 34 would go to $3. 179 titles would be $5 or less.

What if all the Hastings bidders bid on all the titles already hitting 50-60% on the progress meter? To take these twenty-four titles over the line with the present number of bidders would require bids totaling $1,304. If all the Hastings bidders also bid on these, the total for all 24 titles would be $147. The Speaker's Commentary (13 vols.) would go for just $18; The Bible in Seven Acts: Herod to Jesus (a brand new work with teaching media) would go to $6.

The Works of Thomas Reid (2 vols.) -- $3
The Church and the Twentieth Century -- $1
Monasticism in the Orthodox Churches -- $1
Works of Ovid and Horace (16 vols.) -- $4
Classic Studies in Jewish History during the Time of Jesus (14 vols.) -- $8
Works of Xenophon (14 vols.) -- $5
Classic Studies on the Heidelberg Catechism (16 vols.) -- $11
St. John of Kronstadt (2 vols.) -- $1
Select Works of Christoph Ernst Luthardt (4 vols.) -- $2
Lutheran Hymns and Prayer Books (4 vols.) -- $3
The Speaker's Commentary (13 vols.) -- $18
Samuel Prideaux Tregelles Collection (2 vols.) -- $3
System of Christian Ethics -- $1
Medical Works of Antiquity (16 vols.) -- $6
The Works of John Gill (21 vols.) -- $31
Translation of the Vulgate Collection (4 vols.) -- $4
A Dictionary of Philosophy in the Words of Philosophers -- $2
Polybius' The Histories (12 vols.) -- $4
George Barker Stevens Collection (6 vols.) -- $3
Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (2 vols.) -- $1
A Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols.) -- $24
The Rudder (2 vols.) -- $4
Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation (2 vols.) -- $1
The Bible in Seven Acts: Herod to Jesus (Act VI) -- $6

(Note that above I suggest a price of $32 for A Dictionary of the Bible, and below $24. That's because I don't think it's realistic that EVERY present bidder on a title will go to new, higher price. So $32 is what is most likely to put A Dictionary of the Bible over the line; but if everyone who bid on it raised their bid, it would make it at just $24.)

What are the best possible deals? If everybody who bid on A Dictionary of the Bible was willing to bid on other titles, some of the best deals, relative to present leading bids, would be:

Select Works of Archibald Boyd (8 vols.) -- $2
Select Works of Charles Walker (5 vols.) -- $2
Select Works of Temple Chevallier (3 vols.) -- $3
Wordsworth's Church History (4 vols.) -- $3
James Macknight’s Commentary on the Apostolic Epistles (6 vols.) -- $8
Works of William Ralph Inge (20 vols.) -- $8
Life and Works of St. Irenaeus of Lyons (5 vols.) -- $4
Select Works of William Temple (11 vols.) -- $5
Select Works of William Ridgeway (7 vols.) -- $6
The Theological Works of Herbert Thorndike (10 vols.) -- $7
Select Gifford Lectures Delivered at St. Andrews (15 vols.) -- $10
Select Gifford Lectures Delivered at Aberdeen (13 vols.) -- $6
Jewish Quarterly Review (13 vols.) -- $13
George Bull Collection (13 vols.) -- $7
Kenrick's Translation of the Vulgate with Commentary (6 vols.) -- $7
Augustine’s Expositions on the Book of Psalms (6 vols.) -- $6
Horace Bushnell Collection (20 vols.) -- $7
Select Gifford Lectures Delivered at Glasgow (17 vols.) -- $13
Charles Augustus Briggs Collection (15 vols.) -- $12
The Theological Works of William Beveridge (12 vols.) -- $8
Chronology of the Ancient World Collection (6 vols.) -- $11
Select Works on the Thirty-Nine Articles (23 vols.) -- $15
The Works of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (32 vols.) -- $15
Select Works of Aristotle (40 vols.) -- $16
Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca, Part 1 (vols. 1–18) -- $44
Encyclopaedia Biblica (4 vols.) -- $22
The Works of the Rev. Richard Watson (15 vols.) -- $18
Lexham Methods Series (4 vols.) -- $34
Bampton Lecture Series, 1780–1920 (127 vols.) -- $46
The Collected Writings of John Nelson Darby (47 vols.) -- $36
The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages (40 vols.) -- $26
The Sacred Books of the East (50 vols.) -- $52

-- Bob

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Comments

Deacon Steve

Thanks for the analysis, Bob! Very helpful. I've been able to make some updates to my pre-orders.

[:)]

mike

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/555603#Comment_555603

off question,

Bob, would there be discount on Theological Journal 1-15 anytime soon?

I've been hoping that this holiday, this journal would be included in the thanksgiving/christmas sales..

do you mind answering?

Randy Lane

Re:Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (13 vols.)

Bob, If this is in the top 10, and $30 with that many bids is not even enough to cover a third of the costs, why would you set the minimum bid amount at $10 when the item had its debut on CP?

Simon’s Brother

Bump up your bids Folks!

Mark Ziebold

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/555706#Comment_555706

Done, and copy this thread to each thread discussing the specific work. I am taking this to the John Gill threads.

Bob Pritchett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/555607#Comment_555607

Bob, would there be discount on Theological Journal 1-15 anytime soon?

I don't know, since the marketing department handles that, but I doubt it, since this isn't a Logos product, but rather one produced by another company. Sorry!

Bob Pritchett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/555630#Comment_555630

Bob, If this is in the top 10, and $30 with that many bids is not even enough to cover a third of the costs, why would you set the minimum bid amount at $10 when the item had its debut on CP?

I think that when it was posted someone neglected to think through the math, or was over-optimistic about the number of bids it would receive.

Unix

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/555781#Comment_555781

Thanks Bob for bringing these things up again and giving realistic calculations!

Encyclopedia Britannica (32 vols.) needs many more bidders, bidding a little higher than the current projected price. I've posted about this recently: Raise bids to $120: Encyclopedia Britannica (32 vols.)! ... I think it went up almost ~⅔% since.

I'm in on the English Bible Collection with (higher than the current projected price) $80 bids. Would there be any chance of Logos adjusting the size of the Collection, it's currently slightly too big? (The New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (Common English Version) would need to be kept in the collection though.)

Mark Barnes

It would be good if CP pages could be modified slightly to encourage higher bids. There's a tendency for most of us to click on the high-point of the curve, rather than the real maximum we'd be willing to pay.

In particular, it might be helpful if the "Bid Now" price and button was set manually to the mid-way point, at least at the beginning. That might encourage CP curves to start out at more realistic prices.

Bruce Dunning

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557079#Comment_557079

It would be good if CP pages could be modified slightly to encourage higher bids. There's a tendency for most of us to click on the high-point of the curve, rather than the real maximum we'd be willing to pay.

I agree with you Mark. Everyone would love to get a resource as inexpensively as possible but those first bids placed sometimes are so low that it is very unlikely that it would even happen.

In particular, it might be helpful if the "Bid Now" price and button was set manually to the mid-way point, at least at the beginning. That might encourage CP curves to start out at more realistic prices.

I'm not sure I fully understand what you are suggesting here. Could you explain this a bit more?

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557082#Comment_557082

I think I understand what Mark is suggesting...

If for a given title the high end of the CP pricing scale is 100$ and the low end is 1$ the defacto "bid now" price should be 50$, or right in the middle...

However Bob has said on a few occasions that it usually ends up working out to be about 4$ a volume when every things said and done. So why not have it start there; and remain there automatically until 10 or 20% is reached?

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557089#Comment_557089

Another suggestion for the CP's languishing with no bids is to send out an email to every bidder with the same information... "Hey, we see you are interested in (title), we noticed its been in cp for (period of time) and just wanted to let you know that we've been doing the math; with the current number of bidders, to put the title into production today, the bids would need to be (xx$) at a minimum. Thanks and God Bless!

Bob <>< "

Or something to that effect haha. I suspect the forum users don't comprise the total cp user base and that to have 100% reach into that user base email will be required.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557082#Comment_557082

In particular, it might be helpful if the "Bid Now" price and button was set manually to the mid-way point, at least at the beginning. That might encourage CP curves to start out at more realistic prices.

I'm not sure I fully understand what you are suggesting here. Could you explain this a bit more?

There are two ways to bid on a CP title. You can either click on the graph, or you can click on the "Bid Now" button:

The price above that button is the current high-point of the graph. So, if I'm the first person who notices a new CP, and bid $1, that button is going to tell other users "Projected Price $1", and clicking Bid now will place a $1 bid (which is no good to anyone, really).

What I'm suggesting is that the Projected Price be fixed somewhere in the midrange, at least until there have been sufficient bids to be more confident about what the community is willing to pay. Users who want to bid lower can still do so, by clicking on the graph, of course.

Another idea would be to modify the text that says "Your bid is likely to be successful" so that when the curve growth is below expectations it says, "Your bid is likely to be successful, but increasing your bid should help to speed up production."

Rosie Perera

I've upped my bid on most of these to the minimum amount possible above what you said is the required CP price to get these into production. But for several of them, that's not even possible because the bidding range doesn't go up high enough (see my additions in italics).

Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (12 vols.) -- $211 - bidding range only goes up to $180

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (2 vols.) -- $45 - bidding range only goes up to $36

Mormon Studies Collection (45 vols.) -- $227 - bidding range only goes up to $85

Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature -- $41 - bidding range only goes up to $20

The Speaker's Commentary (13 vols.) -- $104 - bidding range only goes up to $44

The Sacred Books of the East (50 vols.) -- $397 - bidding range only goes up to $180

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (3 vols.) -- $104 - bidding range only goes up to $85

Could you please have someone adjust the bidding ranges so it's clearer that these need much higher bids to get into production? Thanks!

David Bailey

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557192#Comment_557192

Could you please have someone adjust the bidding ranges so it's clearer that these need much higher bids to get into production? Thanks!

Indeed, I may be wrong about this, but before the CP is announced publicly, does not Logos have an inkling of an idea of how much it would cost to put a CP into production at the start? Place an arrow on the graph to illustrate the current calculated value. This value (arrow) would move on the graph, based on the current number of bidders and their price points on the graph. It would help us make better bid decisions. What do you think?

Never mind, the percentages will tell us on the graph, but not the actual calculated value.

David

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557198#Comment_557198

Indeed, I may be wrong about this, but before the CP is announced publicly, does not Logos have an inkling of an idea of how much it would cost to put a CP into production at the start?

Yes, they do know how much it would cost to put into production, but they have no idea how popular it's going to be, thus what price everyone who bids would need to be willing to pay in order to reach that cost by multiplying bid price x number of bidders. Sometimes they figure this out part way through when bidding isn't going as well as they'd expected, in which case they do adjust the bidding scale. But when they start out, they just take an educated guess as to what the high and low should be, and it's prone to error.

David Bailey

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557205#Comment_557205

Sometimes they figure this out part way through when bidding isn't going as well as they'd expected, in which case they do adjust the bidding scale. But when they start out, they just take an educated guess as to what the high and low should be, and it's prone to error.

I see. Thanks for the explanation. Perhaps Logos needs some refinement to their trend analysis or regression models for CP? Perhaps they can come up with something spiffy that will automatically adjust the range of the bid scale, say every two weeks, based on the number of bidders that enter or leave the bid, the total bid prices, and with the difference between 100% production cost and the sum of all bid prices so far. Logos has bright minds working over there, so I'm sure they can refine their CP process. [:)]

David

David Wilson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557205#Comment_557205

Bids adjusted and some new bids added.....

Edwin Bowden

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557093#Comment_557093

Another suggestion for the CP's languishing with no bids is to send out an email to every bidder with the same information... "Hey, we see you are interested in (title), we noticed its been in cp for (period of time) and just wanted to let you know that we've been doing the math; with the current number of bidders, to put the title into production today, the bids would need to be (xx$) at a minimum. Thanks and God Bless!

Bob <>< "

Or something to that effect haha. I suspect the forum users don't comprise the total cp user base and that to have 100% reach into that user base email will be required.

Great idea!

Bruce Dunning

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557182#Comment_557182

There are two ways to bid on a CP title. You can either click on the graph, or you can click on the "Bid Now" button:

Thanks Mark. I think I understand your point now. I actually never use the "Bid Now" button so it wasn't in my mind.

Mathew Haferkamp

Thanks Bob for the analysis, here's an idea that might help. What if you were to put together a 500 volume mega pack on community pricing? Using complete collections that you have already on cp but put them at a $1.00-$1.50 a volume only bid. And see if their would be enough interest to put them over, and still leaving them on cp as they already are now. From what I can tell their would be no need for dynamic pricing, and you can set it up as an all or nothing (if you set the bid as if it were fixed at so much per volume).

Randy Lane

An interesting BI analysis/report/graph would be time from start to success (perhaps in weeks) on one axis and price (perhaps in $20 increments) on another axis.

NB.Mick

Bob,

I sometimes think about a possible enhancement to PB:

Priority Bids

Those bids would be offered at a higher price point than the currently listed one, and by priority bidding, users would show their willingness to pay exactly what they bid (even if the PB price later is much less).

Such priority bidding should not replace the current PB function, but be optional (visualized e.g. with a golden prize bar). This wouldn't kill the usual fun element of bringing the price down and enjoying last-minute reductions, but it would of course increase the pool of money needed to cross the 100% line (maybe in visualization this line would be pulled down? Or just have it reflected in the bidders' upward curve).

As an incentive for priority bidding, I'd envision that these titles really are treated with priority, i.e. put at the top of the production line and shipped really fast.

Example in case: Lewis and Short

Several people expressed their view that even at maximum bidding price (I think it's $38) this resource is a steal. There have been numerous "marketing posts" on the forum, blog posts and all. I believe that with Priority Bidding in place, this surely would have crossed the line long ago.

Bob Pritchett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557337#Comment_557337

What if you were to put together a 500 volume mega pack on community pricing?

This is a really interesting idea, and I've actually played around with it. The problem is that we have a lot of production costs in these CP titles. I just grabbed a sample -- all the titles presently between 50-70% on the progress meter. (So, not including books with low interest, and not including those already close to covering costs.)

The total costs for these titles are more than all the revenue the 'Mega Pack' did at Christmas -- and if every Mega Pack purchaser bought this CP bundle, we'd still have to charge $275 / customer, and it would be a lot less than 500 titles. (And, of course, it would be profit-less -- the funds would all go to development.)

I do love the idea of bigger bundles and lower cost, spread over many users. And the larger our customer base gets, the more we can do that. (CP is making a lot of titles available at amazingly low prices.) But we're not there yet...though I'll keep trying!

Butters

Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary -- $32

I've already bid the highest I can bid, $38 - is there any chance we can bid higher? Or is the range set by current bids?

[quote]

E. A. Sophocles Collection (4 vols.) -- $26

I've just raised my bid to $40.

The truth is, I'd pay 100s of $ for either resource. lol.

~Butters [:)]

Butters

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557360#Comment_557360

Priority Bids

THAT ^ is a really good idea sir.

~Butters [:)]

Butters

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557182#Comment_557182

Another idea would be to modify the text that says "Your bid is likely to be successful" so that when the curve growth is below expectations it says, "Your bid is likely to be successful, but increasing your bid should help to speed up production."

That is an excellent idea - unless I'm misunderstanding something, it seems to me that the more information we have about where things are, the better off we'd all be in this effort.

Scott

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557257#Comment_557257

I've been using Logos/Verbum for 2 years and this is the first time I've understood the community pricing system that is described above. I would have been happy to bid above some of the bid prices that I thought were the suggested bid price. I evidently misinterpreted the message, but if I did I'm sure a lot of others did as well.

I think it would be a "win/win" if Logos would update their display and send out an email of what the bid would have to be to get these products to production.

Scott

Kevin A Lewis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557468#Comment_557468

I agree with Scott - with one exception having read the thread I STILL don't understand how this works - I'm not that dense either - it just seems designed to be unclear.

I like Cost $2000 = 200 punters bidding $10 or more - result - production entered

or Cost $2000 = 100 punters binding $15 or more - result - display of 75% funded!

or am I just dense and I should get used to it!

By the way I like the basic idea - just don't understand the specifics or the display

Shalom Kevin