Logos Now and Faithlife Connect: The Why

SineNomine said:

I appreciate his honesty about how, were he founding Faithlife now, he'd probably go subscription only. I'm also glad that he's keeping the buy-and-own model that customers of his like you and me prefer.

I agree - I appreciate both.  I just find it a bit disconcerting that he no longer sees the model we like as a preferred way to do business.  I'd hate to see the ownership model gradually de-emphasized and neglected over time.  I'm not saying that Faithlife intends to do that, or ever will.  I just find it a bit unsettling.

To make my answer real long, I appreciate you saying subscription = payment plan. Thanks for the reply. 

Good day to you Mr. Pritchett,

I hope this reply finds you well.  May I make a suggestion.  All the people that have been Logos Now members could be grandfathered into Logos Connect Essentials at the price they have been paying for Logos Now until such time as they no longer subscribe. It is hard to take away products at a certain price to customers and charge more than double for the same.  Then all new subscribers can pay the new price.  

m wilson said:

Their model requires that you own the books, what they are saying is that the cost of support and new features is outpaced by the income.

m, I figure U mean the reverse of this......Perhaps, if U have time, U could so edit.

Thanks for sharing your insight.

Bootjack said:

Rob, you say "The cost to purchase the full feature set empowering logos 7 is $429.21." I take it that you're referring to a present customer and not a new one, correct? Can you clarify that a bit? Is it a Logos 4, 5 or 6 user who you have in mind or something else.

Mr. Bootjack,

I own a lot of books (still paying for them) and rent the feature set through Logos Now.  I got a quote to buy the feature set for Logos 7 and its related data sets for the price of $429.21.  I took a screenshot but can't upload it. 

Bottom line, full feature set of Logos 7 (not including Lemma in Passage search or any of the interlinear bibles included with Logos Now....Just Logos 7 feature set.... 

Hope this helps.

Rob

MJ. Smith said:

Denise said:

I wondered how many pastors sit around counting theophanies

Don't know about others, but as a child I was fascinated by the tables and lists in Dad's Unger's :-)

Well, yes, me too. And even now, I love to thumb thru one of the atlas's.  I'd imagined our pastor being unable to answer how many theophanies. He'd look at me funny .... like somehow I missed the whole point of Christianity.  

Danny Elliott said:

I have looked at the comparison chart.  The Logos Now features I regularly use will not be available through Faithlife Connect Starter.  I am being forced to pay double for Essentials.  Other new features available still does not bring back the current features I now use.  $200 off Logos 8 is nice, but does not solve the issue of still having to pay double for what I now use.  You can say all you want that Faithlife will give you this or that, but the fact remains that I will still have to pay double for what I currently use.  This does seem like punishment to me.

It is punishment if a cram down is punishment (creditors are given take it or leave it offers... take 15 cents on the dollar or you will get nothing)....... Bob implies that he can't stay in business with the Logos Now model.  I wonder if getting rid of the things we don't want might change that equation.  Again, going back to Business School...., if your overhead is too much for your income you are toast (Harvard even agrees)... maybe cut income from things like the TV and keep those of us who just want to study the bible happy. 

Problem is, Bob, your salesmen sold us the idea of getting cutting edge tools (logos now) and a huge library to serve God.... and now you are instructing your same salesmen to urge their customers to rent this huge library their customers already own (don't worry about it as we don't have an ability to credit you for what you own.... but, don't worry) and also rent the tools you were renting.  

They didn't know better when they touted and pushed logos now... they honestly thought they were doing the right thing for their customers and you... and also could take the commission home to the wife... it felt good to them and the customer.... now management makes their words untrue.

Sir, this will backfire.    It may be a big desert; but, the tents are close together.  Logos is driven by hungry commission driven sales people selling to people who want nothing more than to understand the Bible and serve God...Pretty easy sale....so, the pitch your salesmen use has been, at least to me, let's load up on Books (you own them after all) and, at least now, rent the tools (logos now) so you can have the books you need to serve God.  More the merrier. Stretch and buy the books.... you will do a better job for God.

Simple solution: Cut out the stuff we don't want and all of the overhead associated with it (including employees), sell those of us who have a bunch of books the software and charge for updates.   Folks who haven't gone nearly broke buying (repeat BUYING) books to better serve God can live with this.  Folks who don't have a big library can just rent what they need and buy any add ons.  That way, lots of very cash starved seminariarians can rent the books they need to start their ministry and do their studies.

Does that work???

 

Bob, have you considered going in this direction:

You mentioned that the costs of turning books into Logos resources have dropped. You have hitherto relied on book sales to subsidise program development etc. What if you made this of your strategic goals: to be first to market with electronic versions of Christian books, especially scholarly books. 

There are plenty of Christian publishers whose publications don’t seem to be available in any ebook form (IVP Academic, Matthias Media, etc) - you could target them and partner with them to bring their books to market. 

Likewise the big publishers like Crossway.

Make it part of the publishing process: while they are type-setting the book, an electronic version is sent to you for processing, ready for synchronous launch. 

Become the go-to place to buy Christian works, therefore the go-to place to build libraries. 

This is already a slight competitive edge: double down on it. Aim for Synchronous launches of the entire publishing output of:

1. Crossway  
2. IVP
3. etc

Add them one at a time, and build the relationship with the publisher. 

Don’t offer them only in bundles: offer books as single purchase items, just like other retailers. 

Once you have developed a book into an electronic resource, I’m assuming that its ongoing maintenance costs are low but it will be available for purchase for decades. 

You don’t need to recoup costs on every single book. The aggregate effect of being a better place to buy Christian books than amazon will result in positive cashflow overall. 

I love the idea of a subscription based service but it cost way too much.  I compare all of my subscription services to MoviePass: $10 a month for one 2-D movie a day. If it were $200-$250 per year for all of your Bibles, Language Tools, Maps, Dictionaries and Commentaries I'd jump on it! 

Denise said:

Rob, not arguing with you. I thought Now had no future the day it was intro'd.

But from the looks of the Now wreckage:

- They're crediting Now'ers for much of their investment. And, ignoring Now'ers benefitted as promised.  Pretty much 'made whole'?

- They're intro'ing Connect. It looks like L7 deja vu.  I don't see how people will see the value. Especially if Now acceptance was so low. Who knows.

Maybe just reset the calendar to 2016 and call it a day .... new L8 soon. Buy, or not.

In marketing they make a lot of the question "is this (product) for people like me". Now was. Connect is not. The feeling that kind of change in direction gives is unpleasant. Especially with talk of "if we started today we would be subscription only".

All of us who bought heavily into logos are too heavy a burden I guess. *sigh*

I'm getting out of here for a while again. Till the next time I get an unsettling email from them

Bob Pritchett said:

user="Don Awalt" - The crux of the issue is that FL has developed a lot of extra stuff that is not profitable.

Don, this would be a great analysis, except that one thing is reversed: those 'extra things' aren't the unprofitable part... it's the 'free' Bible software that's unprofitable. Selling it in a bundle model (bundled with books, and now other stuff) is what made the whole thing profitable.

Thanks for the reply Bob. Then I guess I am confused as to why we as users are being forced to purchase a bundle of products that doubles the cost in order to get what we REALLY want - the full feature set; especially if these extras are profitable on their own. You have to see most on this forum don't want to be forced to pay for the extras. Why push customers into something they don't want? If we are asked to understand and respect the business model that says Logos Now wasn't working for FL, why not listen and respect that this bundling of undesirable value for a much higher cost doesn't work for many customers? Isn't that always the business challenge to find a way to satisfy customers and make a profit?

I, too, hope Faithlife is around a long, long time and and hope that the "purchase and download" model is never abandoned since I've invested a lot into that as well! It sounds like the best business solution for Faithlife and for your customers is for the church to keep growing bigger and deeper through evangelism and discipleship until the Lord returns...perhaps we can focus most on that!

scooter said:

m wilson said:

Their model requires that you own the books, what they are saying is that the cost of support and new features is outpaced by the income.

m, I figure U mean the reverse of this

No, I did mean what I wrote, but let me clarify.

Their model has been and still is selling content, i.e. books. FL is Kindle on steroids with a very focused library. They can never rent all their titles, especially in onsies and twosies. Renting content only makes sense for them if it is in large bundles, but those will be limited in scope because of all the complications of publisher's demands etc. People don't even want to buy bigger bundles, let alone rent them. That's why they apparently weren't doing so well with Cloud.

The difference, however, between Kindle and FL is that Kindle gives a simple app away and uses it to drive content sales. 

FL has a much more expensive and complicated app/SW. As Bob made clear, they simply cannot afford to really give that away anymore.  As he explained, they made their bones on selling books. So that is their profit model, selling books.

Because they want to ever grow the business, they need new revenue streams. So they add features and try new avenues, but they then mix those in with the foundational business of selling books and things get screwy. 

I actually think Bob is close to a good model and most people would be happy if:

a. One can buy perpetual licenses as before for both books and SW/features

b. People can subscribe to rent books and features. (But make no mistake, they don't want just renters. They want renters to buy books too)

c. People can subscribe to SW/features only. (This is what most SaaS is about) 

The problem is category (c). These are the folks who have large libraries and will not bring in a lot of money to FL in the near future as they are near saturated in their book buying. They just want to be able to keep up with the SW developments. That's what LN looked like at $100/yr.

What I hear Bob saying is that FL really needs to charge more for that. But instead of offering (c) a modestly increased price, they packaged it all up into things that would almost only appeal to new customers at much higher prices. But I think that is simply a reflection of the truth that they must continue to grow and that past money spent does not help them with that .They always need new customers who will then by large libraries. 

Of course, they through in a bunch of free "floor mats" (as Bob said) thinking that should win people over. Just seems like they are trying to be too much for too many people, and unforntunately that will likely never end, because they must continually "grow the business." 

But hey, I use their stuff and want them to succeed, so I wish them all the best.     

 

 

  

JT (alabama24) said:

Bootjack said:

Too late. I've bought L7 but didn't pay anywhere close to the 400.00 plus price mentioned earlier! :-) 

The ”Full Feature Set” is dynamically priced. If you have NEVER purchased a base package with data sets, your price is $600. Dynamic pricing brings that down. 

I have Silver so that's why I got the wee price that I did. Apparently this is what you mean by Dynamic pricing. 

Bootjack said:

Please forgive mine ignorance but to get the Lemma in Passage, that is not one thing one can buy, correct? 

Not yet. We’ll have to wait until L8 to see which features are subscriber-only, and which are included in a feature set.

I have nothing but the highest regard and affection for Mr. Bob, and the entire Logos company.  I have been with Logos practically from the get - go.  Best decision that I ever made was to build my library in Logos.

I am one of those who has already bought most of the big packages of books that I really need.  And I have little interest in new "features" and tools.  So, I am becoming of less interest to the company.

To get me to make a major purchase, it would take new sets of books that I truly want.  Those books may not be popular enough to justify Faithlife publishing them.  (For example, I would make a major purchase to acquire the scholarly set of Wesley's Works that Abingdon has been publishing for about 20 years now.  But, despite my pleas for years, Logos has not seriously tried to publish the set.)

But I am not an unhappy Logos customer.  Quite the opposite.  I am a very thankful Logos customer.  I use my Logos library daily.   I would make the same choice again, and I recommend Logos to young seminary students frequently.  When Logos 8 comes along, I will no doubt upgrade - make that "little doubt".  If Faithlife's future business model doesn't fit me, I am still a happy customer.

This has the same code. I have an idea if I tried using this again, Logos would unleash a whiplash of lethal viruses into my computer!  :-)

Bob Pritchett said:

Worse, as the tail wagged the dog, Logos Now subscribers (who turned out to vastly outnumber Logos Cloud subscribers) began seeing the product's entire value as the regular release of new features. (Which was not the original intention.)

This is what irks me, the bolded part above - so you know darn well what customers want, but instead of finding a way to give that to them in Phase 2 of Logos Now, profitably, you hide what customers want embedded in a lot of unwanted stuff - betting customers will grumble and subscribe to what they don't want to get what they want. That is NOT customer focused and I won't be subscribing or purchasing until there is some sensitivity to what I want to buy/subscribe to.

JT (alabama24) said:

so give me an example. L8 would cost...???

I don't know. That's ups to the needs of Logos to ultimately determine. But for me the sweet spot is $75-$150 or so, depending on the feature set and how the upgrade makes my life easier.

A few thoughts:

1. I have never thought of getting the software for free. I thought the base package price included at least some cost for software (even if it did not cover the full development cost). When one has the option of buying different levels of datasets instead of a base package, that is surely about purchasing software.

2. It is bothersome that the standard and consistent line has been that Logos books cost more because of "value added" tagging and not that it is cover the software development cost. I am not opposed to it covering the software development cost, but why does it take this outcry of FLC to tell the truth about this?

3. I am in agreement with those that think that FL has diversified too much and should focus on its core. None of my Bible/theology/ministry professors or professors that I know use Logos. It seems to that it would be well worth FL's time to have meetings with these type of professors and find out how to make Logos appealing to them. For instance, I had one OT scholar speaking at an event and I was driving him to the event from the airport I asked him about the Bible software he uses and specifically about Logos. He does not use Logos and said that his scholar do not use because it cannot do the kind advanced search functions that they need. He has been to Logos trainings and asked about doing these searches and no one can tell him how to do it on Logos. If FL got more professors on board with its product, that would expand out to there students for years to come. (Please not that I am not claiming that no scholars us Logos).