Pre-Pub Pricing (Baker Books)

Look, in the end the CONSUMER always wins. After all, he is the decision maker who controls his money. Take a DRM beast for example. When it was first introduced, consumers were at the mercy of labels, content that they paid for did not play where it used too. An outcry was HUGE but it fell on deaf ears... UNTIL "capitalism" kicked in. Sony, BMG,PARAMOUNT or xyz company really could care less about individual voices of consumers, but they surely paid attention to BestBuy and Walmart when these retailers had a ton of returns of DRM-crippled content. (BTW, consumers do have the right to return a product that does not work where it should).
Situation is similar with this pre-pub issue. Of course, copyright holders can charge as much as they want - it is a free economy after all. However, consumers have more leverage here - they can buy the same content, plus or minus the same functionality by buying a used book on amazon (it is amazing, how fast "front-list" titles are sold used). Who was at disadvantage? The retailer!
In the end, the one with fewer bargaining chips, I am afraid, is LOGOS. They need to have the content users want (publishers win) at the prices users will pay (consumers win) AND put all of the work in. This is a Warren Buffett economics 101. Here lies our test of loyalty, however. With all of its past history, Logos has been outstanding for us the customers. They have gone over and beyond fair. They have proven their loyalty to us, haven't they. So are YOU going to dump Logos for XYZ-reader if Logos' version of a book $1.00 more, $3.00? What is your price?
Personally, I am glad that the books are offered individually. First of all, now you can compare books "apples to apples" across different media to see which is a best value. Secondly, we do get "useless fluff" in some bundles that just clogs the Library view. Thirdly, I personally spend too much on buying collections, I would spend a lot less if I bought only books i need at the time, albeit at retail prices.
As a missionary, I really don't have a choice but have all-digital library. Have you ever tried to move 2500+ volumes of books every few months? I am in that minority of users that will pay MSRP, I will just have to order less and be more discerning. But what do you think?

What has happened is that a couple of new additions have been made with a different approach,

Actually there are going to be "hundreds" of (possible) new titles from Baker alone (per official Logos quote), then throw in Zondervan....

The pre-pub concept is and always has been a means of testing whether or not there is enough interest to produce a Logos edition of the title.  If there is not enough interest it will just not happen.

What do you think will happen if everyone jumped on board and purchased the titles at full MSRP?  Economics tell me we will see more and more titles listed at MSRP.....

Mark,

Bob has said we can have our software on multiple computers for use by our family, by family I believe he meant residing in our home. The probelm with L4 is the sync process which as of right now, does not allow seperate setups within the family. You can still us L3 and almost all of your books in that platform to be used by your children in yuor home without messing up your personal L4 settings. Concerning your library being left to your heirs, that is no problem and has been addressed many times here. You can transfer your license in your will to whoever  you want.

Even though I see a trend with Baker and Zondervan concerning their pricing for front-list titles, I still expect to see great pre pubs from Logos and back-list titles at more than fair prices. I have or have had every bible program over the last twenty five years, and I can tell you that I have come to put all my eggs into Logos's basket. They have earned our trust for the future by how well they have responed to us and our concerns in the past. They are not perfect but I believe that they stand head and shoulders above the rest of the market.

I don't buy a Logos title to "read."

It is a part of my electronic Bible study library. I have access to the information that I need In seconds, even if I don't know I have it or where it is. Those benefits do not come without a cost to the publisher (Logos). 

That is why I buy Logos.

I'm not interested in other electronic formats.

I am not involved in this thread,because it's up to me ,to buy or not.everybody has to decide for himself,so does Logos aswell,But the reason I am quoting this is I like simply what you have said,it is what I believe too.

I protest....uh..down with the man and up with dance..

I have read some of this thread, and it seems to me that we're missing an important point, and Logos/Baker are missing an important opportunity. I understand Bob's comments about Baker needing to make 50% of retail on each sale, and Logos needing a certain amount of income to cover their costs. I understand too that I usually get a lot of value added with Logos products, and that we're expecting more and more with every new resource (headword tagging, links to more and more other resources, better metadata, etc.)

But remember that one of the key reasons for the successes of Apple's iPhone was that they changed the game when it came to app pricing. They realised that in software development most of the costs are fixed, and (as you explain with community pricing) you can make one sale for $1,000 or 1,000 sales for $1 and end up with the same profit. You can't do that with paper books, you can do it with electronic books.

In other words, there's a real argument to be had that being innovative in pricing electronic books could reap dividends. Of course if it fails, it could bankrupt the company. But is there not someone willing to try with one of those back-listed books that have already made their money in print? Why not take some really good books, and sell them for $5, or even $1? Why not put some Baker books on community pricing and see what they go for? Why not genuinely experiment and innovate when it comes to pricing new releases - at least some of the time?

The iPhone is a suitable model for physical books as it is a physical device. Although there are some savings for mass production, a complex physical object like the iPhone will always have significant variable costs which will not allow deep price discounting. You couldn't sell 1 billion iPhones for $20 and still make as much profit as selling 50 million devices for $400. With electronic books, you can.

The iPhone is a suitable model for physical books as it is a physical device. Although there are some savings for mass production, a complex physical object like the iPhone will always have significant variable costs which will not allow deep price discounting. You couldn't sell 1 billion iPhones for $20 and still make as much profit as selling 50 million devices for $400. With electronic books, you can.

Are you forgetting that each customer costs a certain amount for customer support?

Printed books don't have a customer support cost.

I have been thinking the same thing with some of the more expensive commentary collections. I think if the folks who set pricing would look at the business model of the App Store they would find something interesting. On a fair number of occasions game developers would release a game at $9.99 or $5.99 and it would not make much money. The game when discounted to $1.99 or even $.99 would then generate far more in revenue than when it was significantly higher priced. Folks think very little of spending $2 and that translated to a lot of sales. Now take a piece of IP like the International Critical Commentary. I would dearly love to have this set but at $1,750 it is unlikely to ever see my collection. How many of these units can Logos actually sell? Nobody knows but I would guess maybe 5% of Logos users can afford something like this. What if you lowered the price to $499? I bet it would fall into a range where more like 25%-30% of Logos users could or would buy it. That is 5x-6x as many buyers. All the sudden you have made more total revenue selling at a lower price than you every would have a a higher price. Since the fixed costs are already taken care of and the per unit costs are very, very low this model makes a lot of sense. I hope Logos and their publishing partners will take a good look at this trend.

The question works its way up the chain to the IP owner. If they are thinking dollars and cents they will take the path that leads to the highest generated revenue. A lot of times that is not necessarily the highest price. Then again if they want to sell printed books and not undercut them the argument fails. I do think that the model for transacting media is changing very quickly. I am not holding my breath for changes but the argument makes sense at least from a simple standpoint.

Your logos books are also much better than the kindle versions and other ebooks.  They  have a better search engine and easily go to footnotes and other references (esp. scripture.) They also have much better mark up, notes and clippings features; not to mention they are in color well before ipad!

Vladimir I will address briefly your response in the thread.  I think this will probably be my last since I feel my welcome on this topic has run out.  I believe that the choice to buy or not buy has nothing to do with Christian stewardship or any other theological concept.  From my vantage point its about the free market and people using their resources to address their particular perceived needs through the purchase of Logos products.  If there is a better, more efficient, more effective, and cheaper alternative in the market then that new product perhaps should be considered by Logos consumers. 

On one hand I agree that each person needs to consider for themselves what level of Logos product he or she should buy without others questioning such purchases especially when that product meets their needs.  On the other hand I don't think Logos consumers have any kind of moral, ethical, or Christian responsibility to this company in any form primarily because its a product.  Brand loyalty is a personal choice which may or may not be beneficial to each consumer of Logos products and rightfully so I think.  The only guarantee I have from Logos products, which are of a high quality, is that it works for now for me.  The market is a tough place even for Christians imo.

What if you lowered the price to $499?

The question is does $499 cover Logos' licensing & royalty fees to the authors & publishers?

Mike,

You're missing the point. The traditional model is that publishers get 50% of retail, of which they pass on perhaps 5%-10% to authors. Those figures have been worked out on the basis of print books, and they cover the cost of fixed and variable costs. They ignore the fact that there is very little variable cost in the electronic market. If they sold ten times as many books at a tenth of the price, then those figures could be 5% of retail and 0.5-1% to authors, and everyone ought be just as happy. Indeed, ministries ought to be even more happy, because ten times as many people are benefiting at no extra cost to them.

Mark,

I understand your point, but take the ICC commentary series, when it went on prepub for 1,000.00, less that three hundred prepubs were signed up for. Now it's 1,750.00, if it was dropped to 1,000.00 again how many more people would purchase it? Books like this used to be too costly for most scholars, let alone lay people and were found only in a good theological library. Now everyone wants a cheap seminary library on their laptop. I hope eventualy this will happen, but with ebooks sales in the single digit range compared to print, I think we're putting too much pressure on Logos for creating a pricing model that needs more volume than is happening right now.

Perhaps I'm wrong, I would love front-list books at a discount, but the only reason we got the NICOT/NICNT  is becouse we were willing to pay enough lhat Eerdman's felt it wouldn't hurt them, and that they had recovered most of there publishing costs already in print over the years. We paid 100.00 more that CBD's print edition sells for which is 46% off MSRP, based on that I do not think Eerdmans receives 50% of MSRP for that set in paper. Yet nobody said anything about this set being priced too high or such comments, we were just glad it was made available to us for purchase, me included.

My point is that I'm afraid that after we have exhausted the most popular back-list and out of copyright titles, we are going to want and demand more front-list titles to buy. Price sometimes becomes less important that access to long sought after titles. I personaly feel we have almost exhausted the 20% of books that meet 80% of our needs ratio already. If Logos sold their complete library - Call it the "Diamond" package, 10,000 titles for 10,000.00 dollars, who would buy it? Who could afford the payment plan? The price would be right but only a wealthy school could probably afford it. How much of the 1.00 per book would go to the publisher, for that matter the aurthor?

One further thought is Logos 4 is not the perfect platform for managing a 10,000 volume library, already doing searches on your complete library returns too many hits with no easy way to manage them. Yes, collections are the current answer, but it is a kludge when you really want to find "relevant" information in "all" of your Logos library. Think how much we now miss because we can't or won't spend the time to sort through it all. As our expectations grow, and our library's increase in size, this can only get worse.

[Y] Great overview of key points missed by most!

Mike,

You're missing the point. The traditional model is that publishers get 50% of retail, of which they pass on perhaps 5%-10% to authors. Those figures have been worked out on the basis of print books, and they cover the cost of fixed and variable costs. They ignore the fact that there is very little variable cost in the electronic market. If they sold ten times as many books at a tenth of the price, then those figures could be 5% of retail and 0.5-1% to authors, and everyone ought be just as happy. Indeed, ministries ought to be even more happy, because ten times as many people are benefiting at no extra cost to them.

This, exactly. More revenue can often be generated on the same product given a lower cost. In the high end retail world this breaks down as there is a loss of "exclusivity" at a lower price. In some software tool circles it breaks down too because you want to use high price as a barrier to entry for those who really don't need a given product and would drive up support by owning something they don't understand. In eBooks as a general practice and very much so in Christian software getting more product penetration while even maintaining the same revenue amount should be seen as a major benefit (market share in the secular world and furthering the Kingdom in our circle) and that is forgoing the thought that a lower price will often increase total revenue. The way business is transacted is really, really changing and I think publishing houses are slow to change with it.