All this feedback is fascinating, and I appreciate it. (Though I must confess the stuff that borders on character assassination is getting on my nerves. I'm glad you're all so passionate about Logos, but come on, we're just offering something for sale. You can buy it or not. It's not a moral point, it's a business transaction.)
The funny thing is, nothing is being offered at over retail price. We're just all so used to thing being offered for less than list price that list price seems like some kind of offensive thing.
I harbor all kinds of fantasies about how we can equip the world for pennies. We even try a variety of experiments to make it happen. The problem is, it just doesn't work. There's too much friction in the market, too many people who want hand-holding or to ask questions or get support, and it costs (even in this electronic age) too much to get the word out.
Zondervan is a $200+ million company. So if every nominal Christian in America sent them $1 a year, they could make everything they produce each year available to all.
Why don't they do this? Because it woudl cost more than $1/person to administer and support the program, and even then people would say things like "I hate all their books! I don't want to send them $5 a year [for a family of five] for that stuff! They publish <whatever-heresey> and I won't support it!"
And, even if we DID all sign up for the program, how would they find the right mix of content to deliver? What if they only did protestant canon material and annoyed some people? What if their BIble translation was too literal, or too dynamic, or too conservative? What if their Christian fiction was all Scottish highlands based when everyone wanted Amish romance?
So they do what works, even though it costs those of us who purchase their material more, and keeps the content in fewer hands: they produce products they think will work, at prices they think people will pay, and then the market tells them if they're right, what it wants more/less of, etc.
The idea that this experiment with Baker (and the release of Zondervan titles) is some kind of conspiracy to move everyone to more expensive content is ridiculous. I'd be offended if it wasn't just silly.
We need to generate millions of dollars of revenue each year to meet our obligations. (Payroll, rent, computers, phones, coffee, etc. for 175+ people.) We literally can not take advantage of you. Because every single day we need you, collectively, to be buying more content from us, or we go out of business and are unemployed. Yes, there are predatory business practices. Sometimes a big company cuts prices and drives competitors out of business, then raises prices. It can take a while for the market to punish this, and for little competitors to re-emerge, etc.
We don't have this strength. There are myriad places you can buy the content we sell, in many formats.
We aren't in a geographically constrained market. You are our only customers. We don't have people in cities around the world subsidizing our attempt to manipulate prices in your town. The Internet is one town. If we want to be in business next year, we need to take care of you -- all of you -- this year.
Again, publishers are struggling to survive. Most Christian publishers have been laying people off. They are in no position to be rubbing greedy hands together and manipulating prices higher so they can roll around in rooms full of cash. They just want to eat. The $9.99 e-book is not an accurate reflection of the market's new cost structure, (though it may be someday), it's one company's subsidized attempt to destroy its competitors. (Amazon.com now works directly with authors to create e-books and print on demand titles. They are trying to kill traditional publishers, and have been eating losses in e-book sales to reset consumer expectations, which they're apparently doing successfully. And I'm not making any judgment on this -- it's the nature of competition -- I'm just saying the $9.99 is a number with artificial influence.)
We are now experimenting with new models with publishers in response to your requests. As many of you have kindly pointed out, nothing about our new Baker deal changes anything about existing deals. We aren't raising prices. If we didn't do things this way, we simply would not be offering these titles. Success with a Baker title is just that -- success with a Baker title. There are components of the deal (that I won't go into) that make it a unique situation. The publishers who've chosen other paths aren't seeing any reason to change their program.
It's also important to note that this is not a price increase. This is an attempt to get for these titles what the publisher is already getting for them. The alternative isn't to offer these cheaper, it's to not yet offer them at all. There isn't a comparison between Baker Book A with "this model" vs. "last month's model". Last month these books were only available in paper, and the wholesale price was the same. (The only difference is that we aren't discounting the retail they way some paper vendors might, but we have real costs and scale issues that are different from online paper retailers.)
With regards to the description of pre-pub: It's interesting to see how pre-pub has taken on a very specific meaning for many of you, and that's fine. In my mind, though, it still means one thing: We offer it for sale "pre-publication", and only produce it if there's enough interest. The discount for early orders is an incentive to force decisions, not a promise inherent in the words "pre-publication."
So what's the incentive when it's offered at full-price? Well, the book itself. If there aren't enough orders, it just won't be available.
This non-financial incentive will probably only work with "hot" titles, but that's fine. For titles that aren't "hot," we'll be forced to offer a time-based discount, as we presently do for so many things.
These discounts and the false sense of urgency they create could seem a bit silly. Why not just set one price and offer all the titles at that price forever? Isn't that more fair?
Maybe. Except it just won't work. Because of real-world issues like cash flow, and the need to minimize money-losing projects, etc. To sell one copy I need to pay 100% of productions costs. It may be true that every book will cover production costs over the next 10 years, but that means we'd need massive amounts of cash to do 10 years worth of production up front, to be earned back over 10 years. And cash itself costs money. So this false sense of urgency we create with pre-pub discounts isn't really false. It is a way to identify your top priorities, incentivize early decision making, and share the benefit we receive from your early decision making with you. And ultimately it cuts our costs (by eliminating our need to pay interest on the money required to cover 100% of production costs before the first sale).
With regards to incremental costs, and the extra units we'd pick up by making things cheaper... the problem is there's limited demand for the content, and people don't all value it the same. Yes, 300 copies of a commentary set at $1,000 nets $300,000. And maybe I could sell more copies at $500. And 600 x $500 also equals $300,000. But somewhere you stop picking up new customers as fast as you drop the price. At $1, the commentary is a steal. But I don't have 300,000 customers. Moreover, there may not be 300,000 people who care about it anywhere on earth. So what about 30,000 people at $10? We still don't know enough likely buyers. 15,000 at $20? Well, we know that many buyers, but at $20 people start to wonder if they really want that set, or maybe would rather have a different set. And if there are three $1,000 commentary sets, I'm going to need 45,000 customers at $20, etc.
And even if I sold 15,000 copies at $20, I now have distribution and customer service and tech support costs for a lot more people. And with $20/unit, and customer service reps costing more than that per hour (when you add up salary, healthcare, phone, computer, space, coffee, etc.), a single phone call wipes out all the revenue.
There is a price-demand curve, and it's mysterious. Halving the price doesn't always double sales. Sometimes it triples sales, sometimes it doesn't affect them at all. (You can drop the price of a unicycle from $160 to $80 and I still won't buy one. You can drop it to $5 and I won't buy one. Turns out, the same goes for a Coptic lexicon, and even some large Bible commentaries. Some things I just don't need or can't use.)
We use community pricing to show you how these curves work. The fact that the curves have different shapes shows this. If demand and price are perfectly linked, the curve is straight and perfectly horizontal. If there's any peak, it reveals a "magic number" at which revenue is maximized.
Now, all that said, I still like the fantasy models where we're able to give you more for less. And they aren't complete fantasies. Government works this way: everybody gets taxed, and then services no one would buy (or could afford to buy, like national defense) are made available to the whole group. Cable television works this way, too: you pay $50+ per month and millions of dollars of entertainment is piped to your house. You could not afford any of those movies, and yet you get them all for $50 because the cost is shared with millions of other people.
The only problem is, you and I both don't like much of what the government chooses to do (on our behalf), and we often don't care much about what's on TV either. So we still go and buy services, products, and movies directly. We pay $11 to sit in a theater sometimes to see the movie we want to see right now, instead of staying home where it's likely there are 10 movies available simultaneously, already paid for in our cable subscription.
What's the answer? There isn't just one. It's a messy world, full of many opinions, different ideas of what's important, competing priorities, and limited resources. We're working through it, just like you. In our defense, I'd argue that Logos offers more pricing models and more transparency than any other digital content provider. We have "stuff for sale." We have sales. We have pre-pub. We have community pricing. We have stand-alone books and bundled products and once-in-a-while crazy discount systems like Logos March Madness. At some point we'll offer some things by subscription, too.
On average, 300 people participate in each Community Pricing offering. I know for a fact that if every Logos user put a bid on every Community Pricing book, the price on every title would be the posted minimum. We'd make money, cover costs, and deliver each title at the lowest price shown. (We could even slide the scale down for most. titles to around $2 or less.) The problem is, there are some books some people don't care about at any price. And other people want to engage in game theory to minimize their own risk. True, it works for one person. But it raises the overall costs to the community. (I'm not complaining -- it's how we all work, and how economics works.)
I run the numbers on creative pricing all the time. I would love to offer a $20/month deal that made everything we ever produced (and more each year) available to every subscriber. At $240/year that would be a better deal than what most of you invest with us each year, and would make a massive library available. The problem is, it would take tens of thousands of customers. And a lot of convincing authors and publishers. And there'd be complaints/cancellations because this year there were too many Hebrew books, or Greek books, or Calvinist books, or Wesleyan books, etc. And we'd have a whole new world of costs finding and keeping subscribers. And sadly -- the big problem -- there simply may not be enough people who care enough about Bible study to invest $240/year. (Or at least not enough to equal the revenue earned the way we're doing things now.) Even some of you might say that a single purchase of Bible Study Library meets your needs for years, and you don't need to keep paying for more books, because you can't read all the ones you have.
But we're still working on it, and someday, may be able to make it work.
I appreciate your feedback, and don't mind the criticisms. I hope, though, that you'll appreciate that our desire is to serve you well. Yes, we want to make a profit. But we're trying to do that while making as much content available to as many people as possible.
Pre-Pub Pricing (Baker Books)
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Bob Pritchett said:
Amazon.com now works directly with authors to create e-books and print on demand titles. They are trying to kill traditional publishers, and have been eating losses in e-book sales to reset consumer expectations, which they're apparently doing successfully. And I'm not making any judgment on this -- it's the nature of competition -- I'm just saying the $9.99 is a number with artificial influence.
You are correct about them trying to kill traditional publishers. Amazon recently offered authors 70% royalties on eBooks.
By the way, were you aware that Logos was favorably mentioned in the book An Uncommon Union: Dallas Theological Seminary and American Evangelicalism by John D. Hannah?
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Bob Pritchett said:
Though I must confess the stuff that borders
on character assassination is getting on my nerves.That's definitely putting it nicely.
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It gets on my nerves too, but I am glad it is allowed. you are far better off to know how people are really thinking, instead of having a bunch of yes men!
In Christ,
Jim
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JimVanSchoonhoven said:
you are far better off to know how people are really thinking, instead of having a bunch of yes men!
Yes men are not desirable but politeness appears to be underrated on the forum. The message is lost in the delivery.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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JimVanSchoonhoven said:
a bunch of yes men!
And there certainly arn't any of those around here.... [;)]
Logos is a business NOT a ministry, and I expect it to be run as such. And like any other business that I, or the Church the Lord has entrusted me with, spends thousands investing toward, I expect to voice an issue when I have one, and I'm glad we are able to do it. (If we didn't do it here, it would be done elsewhere and Logos wouldn't be able to learn from it)
I do wish there weren't any personal attacks involved. However, I hope that all complaints are not accused of being personal attacks...
-I do not like the new direction the pre-pub program is taking. I also truly believe that if the baker/zon. 'experiment' is successful that we WILL see both greater increases in prices in the pre-pub program as a whole. (the other publishers would most certainly catch on) and we'd see more resources listed at MSRP. I don't see a way around this, and it seems rather obvious to me. (these are my main issues)
-I believe there were/are many valid points made from all sides on this thread, and I believe Logos has gained in the long run from hearing from those that allow it to function. (that is their consumers)
-Thank you Logos for a great program, and the opportunity you give your customers in voicing their opinions and concerns.
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Jeremiah Daniel Morris said:
I don't see a way around this, and it seems rather obvious to me.
This BECAUSE Logos is a business, and if any business realized that its customers are willing to pay more for a product, they are going to offer it at the higher prices... Or if the publishers realized that other publishers were getting more for their resources obviously there is going to be the ban-wagon effect... (Like all the new Saints fans today... [;)] )
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Jeremiah Daniel Morris said:
I also truly believe that if the baker/zon. 'experiment' is successful that we WILL see both greater increases in prices in the pre-pub program as a whole.
I don't understand. Is Bob's word not enough for you? I thought he was rather explicit about his desire to make books available and affordable.
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MJ. Smith, the message is only lost in the delivery, if we are not walking by faith. When we let outer pressures determine our response, the problem is not them, it is with us.
Lest we forget everyone on these boards may not be believers, do we really want them to believe that outward conformity to certain standards equals good?
The issue is really one of the heart, and attempting to get people to cover up the true condition of their heart by being polite or good, does not change the heart, it only makes it more difficult for us to see where they are at. And if we are not careful we put ourselves up as judges of what is good or bad, or polite or not polite.
You may not see my point and if you don't that's okay, but I want to see honest expressions rather than white washed thoughts.
If no one ever disagrees or attacks us it is harder for us to learn to rest in Christ, in this case how Bob handles these comments is what is important, will he allow the flesh to fight back or will he walk by faith, resting in Christ.
And you may be right, I may under rate politeness!
In Christ,
Jim
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It amazes me how so many on this thread seem to be experts in marketing and the finer points of e-publishing. And, just maybe, some sould get back to spending more time in Bible study.
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Bob Pritchett said:
What if their Christian fiction was all Scottish highlands based when everyone wanted Amish romance?
This has got to be your best line ever!!! Thanks for such a great start to my day!
Bob Pritchett said:With regards to the description of pre-pub: It's interesting to see how pre-pub has taken on a very specific meaning for many of you, and that's fine. In my mind, though, it still means one thing: We offer it for sale "pre-publication", and only produce it if there's enough interest. The discount for early orders is an incentive to force decisions, not a promise inherent in the words "pre-publication."
This is very true. And that has crossed my mind as many have complained (and even I "argued" for taking at least a couple dollars off the new Baker Books, and also expressed my suspicious frustration--perhaps based on previous annoying experiences on the whole with them--with Z's new offerings). Even with my own whining, I realize "pre-pub" means just what you said it does. While I did not share the abundant sense of being betrayed--if the pre-pub page wording wasn't changed to "reflect" the Baker deal, or that Logos has suddenly turned into a money grubbing corporation, let's call you "Big Epub" from now on--it is not unreasonable for people to be confused/upset/surprised/disappointed at a perceived "policy change." I think you understand that. And that is the image that Logos portrayed, even stated. Someone suggested that it would have helped a lot to have clearer, more "up-front" (in the sense of disclosure regarding the departure from the norm) communication about that. That said, i don't feel any animosity toward Logos and I think we ALL share responsibility to check our reactions based on our disappointment at the loss of pre-pub discount.
Perhaps some of us DO feel entitled. Perhaps some of us are stressed by money issues already and not getting a perceived "good deal" takes away a rationalization to buy ([:O][:P]). That said, I am very glad Baker has entered in to this way with Logos. yeah, I STILL wish they were cheaper, but I don't see a conspiracy, and I will probably buy some of those resources, even if I can get them 50% cheaper in hard copy. I love Logos, I want it to get better, not worse. And I want it to last. thanks.
Hmmmm. could there be a "Logos Lite", with all these "reading books" in a cheap production edition, and regular Logos with great tagging? Maybe the two levels would increase Logos' reach, and increase sales. I could see myself getting books in both styles. Some reading books like "Simple Church" in Logos Lite, and other, more intense books (with tagging/searching capability to the max) at full SRP, as I need them.
I like Apples. Especially Honeycrisp.
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Thank you Bob. I really appreciate your openness at the time you've taken to make your position clear. It is exactly what we've come to expect from Logos. Thank you. Now, if you could persuade a Baker representative to make a similar, if briefer post on their take on this pricing strategy, our understanding would be complete. Can Baker rise to the challenge?
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Garrett Mercury said:
It amazes me how so many on this thread seem to be experts in marketing and the finer points of e-publishing. And, just maybe, some sould get back to spending more time in Bible study.
And, just maybe, some should quit with the moralizing tone.
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Thanks Bob. This is one of the reasons I LOVE Logos and have spent more money on the library attached to the software than I have ever spent on any other computer based program. I appreciate the descriptions and we do all choose to buy or not every time we are tantalized by products we desire and don't have. I don't understand all the pricing models as some of them seem to have an inherent mental impedance mismatch. If you could comment on this it would be greatly appreciated. I know you are busy and swamped with question but your view on this is the one that really matters.
With a ~$2,000 commentary set in view it seems to some of us that it is aimed at Institutions or Libraries where the resource can be shared. That is definitely the model for the paper version. I know of very few who would buy something like that strictly for private use. Based on other posts though sharing a resource like that would NOT be legal so it is intended in its electronic form to be consumed by the individual. I seriously doubt many individuals can afford it though. I assume the price is driven by the publisher and wonder if they understand the new delivery and consumption model via software?
In the end my motives are selfish. I am not in seminary and am not a pastor but enjoy and am edified by studying with commentaries and other top notch resources. I would love to have ICC and/or NICOT/NICNT for my own use but just can't rationalize the price. Am I really that far out of the norm?
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Dan DeVilder said:
(and even I "argued" for taking at least a couple dollars off the new Baker Books, and also expressed my suspicious frustration--perhaps based on previous annoying experiences on the whole with them--with Z's new offerings). Even with my own whining, I realize "pre-pub" means just what you said it does.
As mentioned earlier, we have come to expect Pre-Pubs to be heavily discounted based on past practice. Don't get mad at Logos for successfully using an advertising technique. Every day we respond to ads that promise "up to 90% off." Just be glad some Pre-Pubs are discounted and go from there. All that really matters in a business deal is if the Buyer & Seller agree on a price. I like having the opportunity to decide for myself rather than not have any chance at all to purchase.
Dan DeVilder said:Perhaps some of us DO feel entitled.
Some are feeling entitled because they invested in large collections with Zondervan only to pay retail again. I have no sense of entitlement with Baker. I have purchased previous Baker collections and saved a lot. I am very happy with Baker's track record. Their software still works fine whereas Pradis never has been finessed. Baker's mistake in their current pricing was being realistic in setting their retail prices. Academic titles from Sheffield, Paternoster, Brill and most every college bookstore go for hundreds of dollars each, not $19.99. I would feel much better to buy a Baker title at their current Pre-Pub prices if they would only list their retail at 4x what they do. If you examine Baker's Pre-Pub Collections the per book price is no different than the new listings in Pre-Pub. The only difference is we get to pick & choose individual titles.
Dan DeVilder said:Hmmmm. could there be a "Logos Lite", with all these "reading books" in a cheap production edition, and regular Logos with great tagging? Maybe the two levels would increase Logos' reach, and increase sales. I could see myself getting books in both styles. Some reading books like "Simple Church" in Logos Lite, and other, more intense books (with tagging/searching capability to the max) at full SRP, as I need them.
Logos is the PERFECT software for academic & vocational use. In the past I would not have considered Logos for just "reading." Bob has changed all that with the introduction of the iPhone app and the "cloud" model of having a downloadable library with online access. Logos is now nearly the panacea of Bible software. My hope is to see Logos further expand to include the LOEB library and other "secular" works. btw: The Harvard Classics is on Pre-Pub. http://www.logos.com/products/prepub/details/3661
Do you know about the Nelson 501 book unlock? http://www.logos.com/products/details/5905
This is a good example of how to mass market the "reading" material. I don't expect to get the same percentage discounted off "academic" or reference titles.Logos 7 Collectors Edition
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Bob,
Thank you for weighing in on this issue. Your insights are a great help to helping us understand the realities of the your business and I hope that our interactions are helpful to you in getting a pulse of where your customers are.
I am a bit surprised that your are surprised that your customers have the idea that PrePub means that the item is to be discounted. The old wording of the PrePub pages certainly suggested this and with just a few exceptions almost everything has been discounted.
Moreover, the way you price resources in your “download store” has conditioned us to not expect the resources there to 1) respond to completive pressure and 2) not reflect the realities of front-line vs. back-line prices. Let me give you an example.
Way back in Logos 1.8 days you started your first “publishing partner” relationships and one of your first was Baker. Baker released a number of Baker Byte products. At first these were just individual books. One of the very first resources I added to my library was the “Evangelical Commentary on the Bible.” I purchased it at a local Christian bookstore for the full MSRP which at the time seemed reasonable to me because it was still a fairly new book and at the time the only discount retailer I knew of that discounted Christian books was CBD.
Then Baker, decided to bundle a number of these resources together in their Level 1, 2 and 3 collections. While the cost of any of these collections at the time was more than the cost the individual books together they were such a good deal that I purchased Level 3 and still felt I came out ahead. I believe I spent something like $149 on it. In time, the normal retail pressure has been at work on these Baker collections and now a person can purchase one of these for $19.95 ($9.95 on sale) plus postage. I am still OK with this, I was an early adopter, and this is the price one has to pay for being an early adopter.
So what has happened in your unlock store? Well the Evangelical Commentary on the Bible is still selling for the full MSRP of $59.95! This is more than twice as much as the total collection is selling for! If a person was to unlock all the books on your web site that are on that $19.95 CD they would spend more than $500!
I take you at your word that you want to offer your customer the lowest prices possible, so the only conclusion I can draw from this is that there must be something in your agreement with your publishing partners that keeps you from competing with them in price. This BTW is why the majority of the anger is being directed towards your publishing partners, not Logos.
Moreover, your earlier front-line, back-line example does not hold true for your unlock store. Historical once one of your resources leaves PrePub it will remain forever at “front-line” prices. The Evangelical Commentary on the Bible is hardly a front-line product anymore, but it is still being priced as it was back in the day when I purchased my very first Baker Byte produce and had to install it with a 3.5 inch floppy.
I would be one of the biggest cheerleaders of this new deal with Baker if I knew that your resources would be priced like normal products were: Very expense for front-line products and discounted for back-line. This is the way I purchase other forms of digital media. I never purchase anything on new release Tuesday, but wait 6 months to 2 years until it can be found discounted. If this is the way things would work here I would be a happy camper.
However, from all I have historically seen from the way things work for Logos unlocks, Logos will be forced by your publishing partners to sell these very same books ten years from now for 100% of the MSRP. The PrePub for me was the one guaranteed opportunity I had to purchase Logos formatted resources at a discount. While some book might be discounted more heavily in a future by being included in a base product or in a “special” or in one of your partner’s box products, the PrePub was still the one shot guarantee of a discount. With this in mind, please understand our alarm when we see Logos book coming out of the gate at 100%.
I take you at your word that you truly believe that this “experiment” will not change the behavior of your other publishing partners. I ask you to please try to understand why many of us find this an unlikely scenario. If IVP sees, as one poster put it, “tons” of Baker books sold at 100% MSRP, I find it difficult to believe they would not want to be a part of the action and start demanding their “front-line” products to be sold for 100% MSRP.
Thanks Bob, for taking the time to be in dialog with us.
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P. Keith Larson said:
If IVP sees, as one poster put it, “tons” of Baker books sold at 100% MSRP, I find it difficult to believe they would not want to be a part of the action and start demanding their “front-line” products to be sold for 100% MSRP.
There are many other factors that are part of this, some of which I'm reluctant to go into because they get into party-by-party contract details. But I can assure you that full-price doesn't sell "tons" of anything, and that there are other cash-flow and "who pays up front production costs" issues that ensure that the old model will continue to run in parallel. I personally think it's better for the publisher.
While there are a few imperfections, exceptions, and even "books we forgot to revisit the price on" (there are 10,000 -- sometimes we forget some!), for the most part the full vs. discounted price decision is based on the book's present paper sales strength. That's why BDAG and HALOT, though not brand new, still command high prices -- they still do in print -- and why for other titles they'll only do so while they're fresh and new.
And, of course, publishers have different sales goals and expectations for different books. Sometimes something keeps a high price because their is an expectation that it has a small audience, and that lowering the price won't increase the audience enough to matter. Other times the goal is to get the book out as widely as possible. (That's why so many copyrighted Bible translations are effectively free at http://bible.logos.com.)
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I do appreciate the reasoning behind some of the pricing decisions that Logos takes along with the customer interest shown in this thread. Yet this seems like a rather large thread in relation to most of the others maybe not all though. The issue at hand seems to be, from what I can tell, is some general concerns with pricing of Logos products in general (or a kind of pricing creep).
For me the simple act of purchasing some journals and Christian counseling sources spent my whole semester book budget with Logos. No updates, no cheap commentary series, no theological resources simply because I can't even afford or justify going into more debt for Logos products. Perhaps there is some, if not a great deal, of concern about the present and future pricing of Logos products of customers who appreciate the effort of the company and want to continue to support it. There is a lesson to be learned from so many posts but Im not sure who exactly the lesson is for.
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Matthew C Jones said:
As mentioned earlier, we have come to expect Pre-Pubs to be heavily discounted based on past practice. Don't get mad at Logos for successfully using an advertising technique. Every day we respond to ads that promise "up to 90% off." Just be glad some Pre-Pubs are discounted and go from there. All that really matters in a business deal is if the Buyer & Seller agree on a price. I like having the opportunity to decide for myself rather than not have any chance at all to purchase.
Some are feeling entitled because they invested in large collections with Zondervan only to pay retail again. I have no sense of entitlement with Baker. I have purchased previous Baker collections and saved a lot. I am very happy with Baker's track record. Their software still works fine whereas Pradis never has been finessed. Baker's mistake in their current pricing was being realistic in setting their retail prices. Academic titles from Sheffield, Paternoster, Brill and most every college bookstore go for hundreds of dollars each, not $19.99. I would feel much better to buy a Baker title at their current Pre-Pub prices if they would only list their retail at 4x what they do. If you examine Baker's Pre-Pub Collections the per book price is no different than the new listings in Pre-Pub. The only difference is we get to pick & choose individual titles.
Logos is the PERFECT software for academic & vocational use. In the past I would not have considered Logos for just "reading." Bob has changed all that with the introduction of the iPhone app and the "cloud" model of having a downloadable library with online access. Logos is now nearly the panacea of Bible software. My hope is to see Logos further expand to include the LOEB library and other "secular" works. btw: The Harvard Classics is on Pre-Pub. http://www.logos.com/products/prepub/details/3661
Do you know about the Nelson 501 book unlock? http://www.logos.com/products/details/5905
This is a good example of how to mass market the "reading" material. I don't expect to get the same percentage discounted off "academic" or reference titles.Hi Matthew,
Not sure if you understood me correctly or maybe I am not understanding your response exactly. Like "just be glad some Pre-pubs are discounted and go from there" (I am glad pre-pubs are discounted, and although I expressed that psychologically I might like a few dollars off on Baker's prepubs, I understand what is going on--to a degree--that they are not). Also "don't get mad at Logos for a successfully using an advertising technique". Not sure who that was directed at, nor what it exactly means. (I am not being sarcastic or defensive, i really don't know. Peace, Matthew!)
Dan
I like Apples. Especially Honeycrisp.
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Exactly. It makes no sense to pay full retail price for e copies of books that you can get for 20% or more by using nearly every Christian bookstores minister discount (for those of us that our ministers. Realize that there are many others that use Logos). Often I can save even more by buying from Amazon or CBD. Publishers need to understand that if they want their electronic divisions to succeed that they MUST price them to succeed. That's just the economic reality!
Aaron
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Bob Pritchett said:
There are many other factors that are part of this, some of which I'm reluctant to go into because they get into party-by-party contract details. But I can assure you that full-price doesn't sell "tons" of anything, and that there are other cash-flow and "who pays up front production costs" issues that ensure that the old model will continue to run in parallel. I personally think it's better for the publisher.
I would too. Over the years I don't care to add up how much I have spent on PrePubs. The discount creates a sense of urgency for the buyer, that other wise is not there. I personally don't have any incentive to place a PrePub order at these prices. As you have made very clear there is a limit to how far you can discount and still make a profit, but it is also true that there is often a 'sweet spot" where a discount will generate more profit.
Bob Pritchett said:While there are a few imperfections, exceptions, and even "books we forgot to revisit the price on" (there are 10,000 -- sometimes we forget some!), for the most part the full vs. discounted price decision is based on the book's present paper sales strength.
I didn't realized this, to be honest with you I have gave up on your unlock store years ago. I look forward to purchasing these current front-line Baker books at back-line discounts in the future.
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Even after all my whining and complaining.... I just couldn't help but jump on this pre-pub.... Looks to good.... (cowering in shame)
http://www.logos.com/products/prepub/details/5990
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As an ordained pastor with 20+ years in ministry and a business owner for most of those years, I am honored to work for you Bob and Logos. Thanks for everything you and your family do for Logos customers and for the Kingdom of God! [H]Bob Pritchett said:All this feedback is fascinating, and I appreciate it.
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Jeremiah Daniel Morris said:
Even after all my whining and complaining.... I just couldn't help but jump on this pre-pub.... Looks to good.... (cowering in shame)
http://www.logos.com/products/prepub/details/5990
At least you have the opportunity and choice to purchase it in Logos format -- at any price.
If Bob had insisted to Baker that Logos would only publish it if he could sell it heavily discounted, you would not have had that opportunity.
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Edwin Bowden said:
At least you have the opportunity and choice to purchase it in Logos format -- at any price.
If Bob had insisted to Baker that Logos would only publish it if he could sell it heavily discounted, you would not have had that opportunity.
Well, it was not one I needed but simply wanted. If it had not been there it wouldn't have mattered much to me. And If it was a choice of having all these Baker titles at MSRP or none, my choice is still none.... I know that's not everyone's choice, but just speaking for myself.
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Jeremiah Daniel Morris said:
Even after all my whining and complaining.... I just couldn't help but jump on this pre-pub.... Looks to good.... (cowering in shame)
http://www.logos.com/products/prepub/details/5990
Thanks for the recommendation. I bought it. It looks like a great book. I will listen to it on my Kindle while I drive home today. No wait and a lot less money.
I would have preferred to have bought the book from Logos so it would be part of my general library. But Amazon got my money because it was only 40% of the cost of the Logos version.
Don’t get me wrong. I want Logos to succeed. I’ve already invested in purchasing nearly 3000 books from Logos.
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If my earlier 'temple' comments have been taken as a direct attack on Mr Pritchett or any other individual I offer my sincere apologies. They were not aimed at any person but rather at what I perceive, either rightly or wrongly, to be gross profiteering by (again perceived) Christian based businesses. Coming from a denomination where the $$ seems to be taking more precedence than the Word, I called what I (again right or wrong) saw to which it appears that I'm not alone.
Being relatively new to the ebook world (and one who came in kicking & screaming at that), my expectations / assumptions that a digital title should be less than a physical one may have been somewhat misguided. B & Z have demonstrated how wrong I am. If God wishes me to have any of these titles, he will no doubt, provide them. It matters little to me whether they are Logos or a tattered used print copy. Ether way the words are still the same.
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Joe Miller said:
Thanks for everything you and your family do for Logos customers and for the Kingdom of God!
thank him,also as a customer,I cannot express in words,the joy I have to have these resourses,it is simply something worth,which cannot be measured in terms of money.for me it's not the money that matters,but the privilage I have of owning and using the resourses of Logos.If we give value to the words of God,and to the privilage we have it.I do'nt think that we have to spend days long to comment against this.I really do'nt understand it why many give themselves to critisize.I think it would be better to encourage the owner.No one forces anyone,if some one want to buy ,he can buy ,if not ,not.
Blessings in Christ.
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Joe Miller said:
Thanks for everything you and your family do for Logos customers and for the Kingdom of God!
thank him,also as a customer,I cannot express in words,the joy I have to have these resourses,it is simply something worth,which cannot be measured in terms of money.for me it's not the money that matters,but the privilage I have of owning and using the resourses of Logos.If we give value to the words of God,and to the privilage we have it.I do'nt think that we have to spend days long to comment against this.I really do'nt understand it why many give themselves to critisize.I think it would be better to encourage the owner.No one forces anyone,if some one want to buy ,he can buy ,if not ,not.
Blessings in Christ.
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Dan DeVilder said:
Logos is the PERFECT software for academic & vocational use. In the past I would not have considered Logos for just "reading." Bob has changed all that with the introduction of the iPhone app and the "cloud" model of having a downloadable library with online access. Logos is now nearly the panacea of Bible software. My hope is to see Logos further expand to include the LOEB library and other "secular" works. btw: The Harvard Classics is on Pre-Pub. http://www.logos.com/products/prepub/details/3661
Thank you Dan,I am very glad about your comments.
Blessings in Christ.
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Sandy Turnbull said:
If my earlier 'temple' comments have been taken as a direct attack on Mr Pritchett or any other individual I offer my sincere apologies. They were not aimed at any person but rather at what I perceive, either rightly or wrongly, to be gross profiteering by (again perceived) Christian based businesses. Coming from a denomination where the $ seems to be taking more precedence than the Word, I called what I (again right or wrong) saw to which it appears that I'm not alone.
Being relatively new to the ebook world (and one who came in kicking & screaming at that), my expectations / assumptions that a digital title should be less than a physical one may have been somewhat misguided. B & Z have demonstrated how wrong I am. If God wishes me to have any of these titles, he will no doubt, provide them. It matters little to me whether they are Logos or a tattered used print copy. Ether way the words are still the same.
When we are talking straight eBooks I totally agree they should be cheaper. I buy programming books for my day job and I will not buy an eBook unless it is significantly cheaper than print. To think of Logos as an eBook is to really miss out on what is glorious about it. I understand paying retail if need be when my books have meta data, linking, non-surface word searching, etc. Some sets are just too expensive for my blood and I wish they were cheaper (and think they would sell better if they were) but I understand what we are going about here. The study capabilities of Logos are just not approachable in print.
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Tes said:
thank him,also as a customer,I cannot express in words,the joy I have to have these resourses,it is simply something worth,which cannot be measured in terms of money.for me it's not the money that matters,but the privilage I have of owning and using the resourses of Logos.If we give value to the words of God,and to the privilage we have it.I do'nt think that we have to spend days long to comment against this.I really do'nt understand it why many give themselves to critisize.I think it would be better to encourage the owner.No one forces anyone,if some one want to buy ,he can buy ,if not ,not.
For some of us, unfortunately, money must matter. In my own case, I receive a total of $50 per week by the Australian Government for attending Bible College on a full time basis. At the moment I have only a meagre five or six titles in Logos. To buy a basic Scholar's package at academic pricing is going to cost around three months earnings let alone a full year to own Z. For me to own them in any format will be a privilege. To own them in Logos will be nothing short of a miracle.
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Robert Mullen said:
I buy programming books for my day job and I will not buy an eBook unless it is significantly cheaper than print. To think of Logos as an eBook is to really miss out on what is glorious about it.
A good point to bring up Robert, thanks. I do value my Logos resources more than a regular ebook, they are barely comparable really. Which means I AM willing to pay more for a Logos resources than an ebook to use on Kindle... While I still hold to my original issues (strongly), thanks for the reminder.
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I just can't get over that the President of Logos takes time to enter into dialogue with customers. That is really rare and wonderful. Thanks Bob!
There are no perfect companies, excutives, or CUSTOMERS. Logos is not perfect, but they do really try to do the right thing. They do serve us well.
Like everyone else, I do not like to pay as much for e-books as paper, but I am willing to do so for a few really needed resources. I am perfectly willing for those who can afford to do this to do so as often as they like. I have nothing to complain about if they do.
What really bothers me are the Logos resources that are significantly higher than the street price of the book format. (NIV commentary for example.) I realize that Logos does not control this, and the blame may lie with the publisher. I hope that is so. It does seem to me that to sell the e-book for more than the paper is short sighted.
I really am still not sure that the cost of logos resources are equal to the cost of paper books in the long run. Once the product is produced, those costs are at some point covered by sells, and after that the profit margin for e-books has to be greater than paper books.
That is the way it seems to many of us.
The bottom line is that I have too big an investment - money and otherwise - in Logos not to continue to support this company. I agree with much more that Logos does than I could ever disagree with.
I will certainly buy less Logos product if the cost is high as paper, but I am not angry about it. That is just the reality of my finances. I will buy the ones I can afford, and I will have to look for cheaper formats to access many of these resources.
"In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church," John Wesley0 -
Michael Childs said:
I agree with much more that Logos does than I could ever disagree with.
I agree, thanks for posting that Michael. That often gets overlooked by me when I do have an issue.
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I agree that the Logos books are worth more but only if they are books that I will use as a reference. There are a lot of books that I am going to just read and never refer to again. These books are actually better on the Kindle since they are easier to read on that device. However, I am currently spending about five times as much on Logos books than I am on Kindle books because I am buying a lot more books from Logos.
I would also like to say that the quality of public domain books on Logos tend to have a much higher quality than public domain books on the Kindle. Many of the Kindle public domain books are just OCR scans without any editing (think Google Books). I purchased one a few days ago that was so bad that I called Amazon and asked for my money back. The book was only 99 cents but it was almost unreadable. The same book on Logos will cost me about 90 times more but I may buy it anyway because of the better quality.
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Michael Childs said:
I really am still not sure that the cost of logos resources are equal to the cost of paper books in the long run. Once the product is produced, those costs are at some point covered by sells, and after that the profit margin for e-books has to be greater than paper books.
If I'm understanding Bob's post correctly, the costs for supporting users once they buy the books add a continuing cost to the e-book that a paper book doesn't have. I don't know how that cost compares to the cost of printing a paper book. But I'm guessing it's higher. Bob said the cost of printing a book is pretty minimal compared to the cost of creating it in the first place. And once a person owns a paper book, he knows how to use it. (Unless it's the guy in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRBIVRwvUeE [:)]) Not so with an e-book. Logos bears the cost of supporting all the users who call with installation problems, questions about how to use their book, how to highlight in it, how to get it set up on another computer, etc. This is a lifelong commitment to that user which Logos makes. So I can understand why it would be at least as expensive as a paper book.
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Rosie, you killed me with that YouTube video [:D]
Bohuslav
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Rosie
I guess that sometimes I'm as stupid as that. I'll never call a Helpdesk again! [:S]
iMac Retina 5K, 27": 3.6GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9; 16GB RAM;MacOS 10.15.5; 1TB SSD; Logos 8
MacBook Air 13.3": 1.8GHz; 4GB RAM; MacOS 10.13.6; 256GB SSD; Logos 8
iPad Pro 32GB WiFi iOS 13.5.1
iPhone 8+ 64GB iOS 13.5.1
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Dan DeVilder said:
Not sure who that was directed at, nor what it exactly means. (I am not being sarcastic or defensive, i really don't know. Peace, Matthew!)
Hey Dan, Brother, I did a very lousy post at trying to finally agree with your points. Summarizing:
Pre-Pubs do not inherently mean deeply discounted.pricies.
Baker is NOT overpriced at their suggested retail, IMHO.
I am happier to have the free choice to accept or reject a purchase in Logos format from any publisher than to not have that resource available at all.
I like having 45+ "Bibles". It makes me appreciate my favorites all the more.
I love having Portfolio Edition. It makes me appreciate BobP & Logos, especially in light of what other publishers charge per resource. (Thanks again Bob! [H] )
My only gripe with you Dan is How in the world did Tess quote your quote of my post & you get the nice compliment?? I wanna hijack some compliments like that! [6]
Logos 7 Collectors Edition
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Matthew C Jones said:
Hey Dan, Brother, I did a very lousy post at trying to finally agree with your points. Summarizing:
Pre-Pubs do not inherently mean deeply discounted.pricies.
Baker is NOT overpriced at their suggested retail, IMHO.
I am happier to have the free choice to accept or reject a purchase in Logos format from any publisher than to not have that resource available at all.
I like having 45+ "Bibles". It makes me appreciate my favorites all the more.
I love having Portfolio Edition. It makes me appreciate BobP & Logos, especially in light of what other publishers charge per resource. (Thanks again Bob!
)i actually agree with just about all of this. maybe from a different perspective than yours on certain items, but pretty much the same view!
Matthew C Jones said:My only gripe with you Dan is How in the world did Tess quote your quote of my post & you get the nice compliment?? I wanna hijack some compliments like that!
yeah, lol, I saw that. Maybe that was just his editorial decision in the particular "Message" he was transl--ahhh, writing.[8-|]
I like Apples. Especially Honeycrisp.
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P. Keith Larson said:
Bob,
Thank you for weighing in on this issue. Your insights are a great help to helping us understand the realities of the your business and I hope that our interactions are helpful to you in getting a pulse of where your customers are.
I am a bit surprised that your are surprised that your customers have the idea that PrePub means that the item is to be discounted. The old wording of the PrePub pages certainly suggested this and with just a few exceptions almost everything has been discounted.
Moreover, the way you price resources in your “download store” has conditioned us to not expect the resources there to 1) respond to completive pressure and 2) not reflect the realities of front-line vs. back-line prices. Let me give you an example.
Way back in Logos 1.8 days you started your first “publishing partner” relationships and one of your first was Baker. Baker released a number of Baker Byte products. At first these were just individual books. One of the very first resources I added to my library was the “Evangelical Commentary on the Bible.” I purchased it at a local Christian bookstore for the full MSRP which at the time seemed reasonable to me because it was still a fairly new book and at the time the only discount retailer I knew of that discounted Christian books was CBD.
Then Baker, decided to bundle a number of these resources together in their Level 1, 2 and 3 collections. While the cost of any of these collections at the time was more than the cost the individual books together they were such a good deal that I purchased Level 3 and still felt I came out ahead. I believe I spent something like $149 on it. In time, the normal retail pressure has been at work on these Baker collections and now a person can purchase one of these for $19.95 ($9.95 on sale) plus postage. I am still OK with this, I was an early adopter, and this is the price one has to pay for being an early adopter.
So what has happened in your unlock store? Well the Evangelical Commentary on the Bible is still selling for the full MSRP of $59.95! This is more than twice as much as the total collection is selling for! If a person was to unlock all the books on your web site that are on that $19.95 CD they would spend more than $500!
I take you at your word that you want to offer your customer the lowest prices possible, so the only conclusion I can draw from this is that there must be something in your agreement with your publishing partners that keeps you from competing with them in price. This BTW is why the majority of the anger is being directed towards your publishing partners, not Logos.
Moreover, your earlier front-line, back-line example does not hold true for your unlock store. Historical once one of your resources leaves PrePub it will remain forever at “front-line” prices. The Evangelical Commentary on the Bible is hardly a front-line product anymore, but it is still being priced as it was back in the day when I purchased my very first Baker Byte produce and had to install it with a 3.5 inch floppy.
I would be one of the biggest cheerleaders of this new deal with Baker if I knew that your resources would be priced like normal products were: Very expense for front-line products and discounted for back-line. This is the way I purchase other forms of digital media. I never purchase anything on new release Tuesday, but wait 6 months to 2 years until it can be found discounted. If this is the way things would work here I would be a happy camper.
However, from all I have historically seen from the way things work for Logos unlocks, Logos will be forced by your publishing partners to sell these very same books ten years from now for 100% of the MSRP. The PrePub for me was the one guaranteed opportunity I had to purchase Logos formatted resources at a discount. While some book might be discounted more heavily in a future by being included in a base product or in a “special” or in one of your partner’s box products, the PrePub was still the one shot guarantee of a discount. With this in mind, please understand our alarm when we see Logos book coming out of the gate at 100%.
I take you at your word that you truly believe that this “experiment” will not change the behavior of your other publishing partners. I ask you to please try to understand why many of us find this an unlikely scenario. If IVP sees, as one poster put it, “tons” of Baker books sold at 100% MSRP, I find it difficult to believe they would not want to be a part of the action and start demanding their “front-line” products to be sold for 100% MSRP.
Thanks Bob, for taking the time to be in dialog with us.
This is one of the most thoughtful posts in this thread. I have to commend Keith for the reasonable tone. He, in fact, has articulated how I, too, feel about pre-pubs and MSRPs. I, too, would appreciate an explanation for why so many items remain at "front-line" prices, long after they were first published. Mr. Pritchett, IIRC, suggested in another post that "fresh" titles must be sold at front-line prices, but -- again IIRC -- that later we could expect them to be sold for less. (Or, at least, that's what he seemed to imply.) I haven't seen a new Baker title yet that I will purchase. But, if the price were to be lowered at some point in the future, I probably would pick up some of them. IOW, none of them is a "must-have", IMO. But they would have enough value to pick them up for the right price. (Personal disclosure: I am an L4 "fanboy." I upgraded the day it was released -- and then again later. It is first-rate, world-class Bible software.)
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Rosie Perera said:
If I'm understanding Bob's post correctly, the costs for supporting users once they buy the books add a continuing cost to the e-book that a paper book doesn't have. I don't know how that cost compares to the cost of printing a paper book. But I'm guessing it's higher. Bob said the cost of printing a book is pretty minimal compared to the cost of creating it in the first place.
I am glad that now the atmosphere is now changing from pessimistic to optimistic thinking. In the western world some one may not understand it,but let me tell you from my back ground ,in our idiomatic ,''we say let's go where we can find water ,then we are going to discuss about it.Those who have used this language originally,I think they were in a place where there was scarce of water,for this reason they do'nt have to worry about it in that time. Some one has mentioned ,that money matters for him according to his income I am not against him, my comment was based on the context of different people have commented about the price.No one knows about me only God knows,what I get ,or how I am,but I do not understand it instead of encouraging to Bob and his people ,to put them under pressure.Therefore God is using this man and his peole in a powerful way ,it is better not to waste teme to slow him down,instead it is better to pray and thank God for him and his people.As I have said in our idiomatic language the man is not money centered man ,he will try any occasion to find a way to please his customers. IF I had money I would buy all the books with out arguing about the price.If I cannot buy 10 I buy 5 If not one,even if I do not have for one ,then I keep quite.
Dear Rosie, this comment is not directed to your comments ,I have started to write from your positive comments ,and suddenly my heart blew up.
Blessings in Christ.
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I think it is rather presumptuous to either deny or claim that a particular individual or company or product is being used by God in a business environment. While one may speculate on motivations related to a given price, product, or policy such observations are little more than fodder for energetic thread exchanges. Praying for individuals and companies is entirely appropriate within a Christian community but there is a problem (imo) equating a price point with revelatory information with God. As if God cares how much Logos or Quickverse charges for a product within a profit making endeavor. I would hope when God sees our world and the suffering here that there are more important issues than market factors for those with enough money to purchase rather expensive Christian software.
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Sandy Turnbull said:
For some of us, unfortunately, money must matter
Dear Sansy ,I thank God for you ,and really appriciate you,my brother God is faithful ,he starts and he finishes,I trust the Lord for you ,he will take care of you, and hw will take care of your needs as well..Dear brother ,my comments was not directed to people like you,but it was just over the context of those who were turgeting on the issue of putting under pressure to the owner of the company and for those who work diligently to make it easier for us to have access to read books in Lgosbe format.
God bless you brother.
Blessings in Christ.
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ReneAtchley said:
I think it is rather presumptuous to either deny or claim that a particular individual or company or product is being used by God in a business environment.
Dear ReneAtchley,I would say,I think you have misread my opinion or you haven't understood me,I do'nt mean this Person or company is only used by God,but I believe God has invested on him the money and knowlege to use him as a tool for the benefit of the spreading of the Gospel massage .What I would say ,this man has done no pressure on us,our money is with us ,we have our will, if we want we can buy if not ,we do'nt.
Blessings in Christ.
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If some one thinks he hasn't done wisely ,one can talk to him or write to him, Myself I am very grateful to have access to the truth of the word.I do'nt know Bob or his people personaly ,I have come from anther continent I am now also living in another continent ,but I know one thing ,where ever we are we are one in Christ.Amen
Blessings in Christ.
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Tes said:
If some one thinks he hasn't done wisely ,one can talk to him or write to him, Myself I am very grateful to have access to the truth of the word.I do'nt know Bob or his people personaly ,I have come from anther continent I am now also living in another continent ,but I know one thing ,where ever we are we are one in Christ.Amen
Amen, Tes, Amen!
After reading so many not ;pleasant ;posts on this topic, Frankly(!) - I appreciate this ;post of yours. Thank you!
:Peace and Joy in the Lord!
Yours in Christ, ................. . Mel
Philippians 4: 4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand..........
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Blessings in Christ.
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