This is an attempt to clarify our terminology, and will be the basis of a definitive web page on the subject. Your comments/feedback welcome!
Logos Bible Software is a product that consists of code and content.
Long ago, we sold the product and sold periodic upgrades to the product, with revised code and new content. The code was essentially a reader for the content, which was exclusively ebooks -- content with a direct equivalent to a paper book.
This created some awkward situations, though:
- Sometimes an operating system upgrade would be incompatible with our code and users would be unable to read their content without an update. We would either have to go back and patch an old version of the code, or the user would have to upgrade the product to get the latest code (and maybe some content they didn't care about), just to keep reading the content they had already paid for.
- Sometimes we would release a new ebook for sale that would require features in the latest code. Some users just wanted to buy this new ebook without paying for an upgrade to the newest version of the product.
- Some users were reluctant to buy ebook content because they worried that they would be stuck on a perpetual treadmill, being forced to buy periodic upgrades to the entire product every few years, just to maintain access to what they had already purchased, as operating systems and computers changed over time.
To better serve our users, we decided to separate code and content in the upgrade process. We announced that updates to the code required to read the content you purchased would be free in the future, ensuring continued access to your purchased content at no additional cost.
There was a subtle distinction between these code updates and product upgrades, since code was just what was required to read your content, and the product was a mix of code and content. Sometimes this distinction was lost in conversation, or streamlined in messages, or simply not understood.
But the point has always been to ensure continued access to purchased content through various platform and operating system upgrades, at no additional cost.
In recent years Logos has begun creating content specifically for digital use. This content does not have a direct equivalent to a paper books. To distinguish this content from ebooks, we have begun calling it data sets.
For example, an ebook might have readable text, designed for humans, like:
AHAZ — possessor. (1.) A grandson of Jonathan (1 Chr. 8:35; 9:42). ...
A data set is designed for a computer. It would have:
#Ahaz, Type=Man, Related Concepts=%Ahaz_Person, Family Relation=#Ahaz_Child_#Jotham is_childmanparent_of #Jotham ...
Some new features in the product are highly integrated with these data sets, just as in the past some features were integrated with specific ebooks. Where the code might once have retrieved the definition of a term by opening an ebook and extracting the text of the article whose headword matched the term, now it retrieves information from a data set and does special processing and presentation of this content.
Over time, more and more of the new features of the product are a mix of highly specialized code and these new data sets. Some new features have no value or usefulness without the data sets. And these data sets are, like ebook content, not part of the free code update, but are part of the paid product upgrades.
This is no different than in the past, when a feature that required a specific ebook only worked if the ebook content was purchased and installed. (You could not see Greek text and morphological analysis in the Exegetical Guide if you had not purchased a Greek text with morphological analysis.)
This describes the situation as it is now, and explains the difference between a free update and a paid upgrade to the product.
What follows is a discussion about the future...
We believe there are diminishing returns for innovating purely in the code that reads ebooks. Our software can already search, display, analyze, slice and dice that content every which way. We will continue to keep the code up to date and functioning on new versions of the platform operating systems (Mac and Windows), and we'll continue to implement and support code that reads the ebooks on iOS, Android, etc. These updates and basic readers will be free.
But the most exciting and interesting features of future versions of Logos Bible Software the product will most likely involve a combination of code (for presentation and manipulation) and unique, hand-edited and curated data sets, which are the modern/future format for much of the content/intellectual-value previously delivered in paper books, and their ebook equivalents.
These data sets will continue to be sold, either as stand-alone content you can add to your digital library, like ebooks, or bundled into products you can buy or upgrade to.
To make it easy to price products, pay royalties, and retain the distinction between code and content, Logos has described and sold data sets much like ebooks. They are line items in comparison charts, sometimes have individual prices, and are unlocked internally just like ebooks.
In the future, this will create logistical and technical frustration: because a data set is not exactly like an ebook. When a book is written and sold it is essentially a complete resource to which a price can be assigned. The author is paid for the completed work, and has no future obligation to expend more effort or write more words. (The occasional typo fix, or corrections in a future printing, can be delivered as a free update digitally, but this is a trivial enhancement.)
The Logos data sets, however, are potentially never-finished projects on which unending resources can be expended. Descriptive limits can deal with some of this -- we can split the reverse interlinearization of every Bible into separate databases, organized by Bible, and account/charge for the work on each Bible separately. We can even count whole new "lines" of content on a Bible (referent analysis, contextual word senses, etc.) as separate data sets.
But what to do with a timeline data set containing 8,000 items? This unique data set, the equivalent of many paper books (e.g. "The Timeline of Church History"), was compiled at significant expense. We label and sell it as a data set and get paid for that work.
But what if we want to add 3,000 more items to the timeline before the next upgrade of the product? In the paper book world you would either revise the book, and sell the 2nd edition at full price as a new product, or create a new volume. ("The Timeline of Church History: Volume II" or "The New Timeline of Church History"). Either way this would be a salable product from which production costs could be recovered.
It seems silly to create a "More Timeline Events" data set and charge for and deliver it separately. The whole point of the data set is to make for smoother integration into the timeline feature.
But if the data set is simply updated with 3,000 more events, and there is no way to collect money for that enhancement, Logos will not long be able to afford to make these enhancements.
(What if we want to create just three new thematic maps to add to the existing set of 60+? How do we cover costs?)
We have a similar project with our enhancements to ebooks. We are continually revisiting ebooks and adding tagging to their content. Much of this work is done by hand at significant expense, but we never charge again for the same ebook content. But in many cases the book is becoming more valuable because of the new tagging, and many new features we would like to offer in the future will require new tagging to be hand-applied to old ebooks.
What is the best way to monetize enhancements / additions to content already sold?
- Deliver it for free and make up the revenue on other sales. We do this now for some enhancements, but it doesn't scale well and limits our budget for improvements. We put more energy into things we can explicitly sell.
- Describe enhancements as data sets and 'lock' them in the user interface for users who don't purchase them. There is a "More Timeline Events" data set in the product configuration, but it really just enables the next 3,000 events in the existing timeline data set. A resource might be fully tagged with new metadata, but it doesn't get used if you haven't upgraded to a product containing the "Enhanced Resource Metadata Volume I" data set.
- Sell data sets by subscription, not as discrete content items. Don't sell the timeline data set or Bible People or Bible Places data sets for a one-time price. Sell them only by subscription, so that a smaller, but continual, revenue stream can fund continued improvement and addition to the data sets.
I welcome your ideas!
-- Bob