Is anyone aware of the reason behind Logos’s gradual shift towards incorporating an increasing number of research-oriented books as “reader editions”? This trend has left me feeling quite uneasy. All of their new base packages, which they proudly proclaim as possessing the “power of logos,” are replete with reader editions. Unless I am overlooking something, these editions do not fully utilize Logos software. Faithlife has consistently demonstrated exceptional management and has provided valuable services to both the Church and the Academy. I am deeply disappointed by this new trend, as it appears to be a departure from offering the tools that make scholarly materials an enjoyable experience to work with. Instead, they are adopting a strategy that primarily targets lay readers. When reader editions were initially introduced, I believed Faithlife’s assertion that these editions would be reserved for books intended to be read from cover to cover. I am uncertain about the factors that prompted them to abandon this initial stance, but I am nonetheless saddened by this change.

  2. Hmm. I may be misunderstanding the model, but I thought tags were placed at the external book level while verse, topic, subject, person, etc. links were placed at the internal word, sentence, and or paragraph level. Thus, while a given document might have five or six external tags, it might also have hundreds, or even thousands, of internal links. Thus, for example, if I want to see what my library says about Romans 10:9, the search function returns 1000+ results in a second or two, each of which incorporates the name of a document in my library, and the location(s) within that document where Romans 10:9 is addressed. And, all I have to do is click on an entry in that results list to be taken directly to the location within the referenced document. To accomplish that same result with reader editions, I would suspect the AI would have to read every word in every reader edition in the collection. Ouch!

  3. And, even then, the AI would only be able to identify the locations; not insert internal links to them. So you'd have to pull up a document itself and then go to the referenced location, instead of just clicking on the entry in the results list.

  4. I think I have seen some books with both a reader edition and a research edition, with the latter at a slightly higher price. A couple of thoughts: 1.) the reader edition should be priced competitively with the major ebook sellers, if it is just meant to be read cover to cover. How useful is an Amazon or epub bible? 2.) The reader edition is good for the person who just wants to read it, and has no plans to do anything else with it. I have purchased Amazon or epub because of price difference and because I only intended to read it once. 3.) Logos needs to be more careful of quality in reader editions. I am currently reading "Pagan Christianity" (Barna & ?) and there are a lot of little errors both in the text and in the footnotes: missing spaces, wrong hyphens, broken words. These should be caught by proofreaders. I have started (missed 1st quarter of book) reporting typos, but am starting to wonder if Logos is hoping for free proofreading instead of hiring someone. 4.) With the exception of things like cook books or books that are obviously just for entertainment (romance novels), a lot of the reader editions need to be offered as research editions, and offered to Logos users who bought the reader edition for the difference between the reader and research editions. Such pricing would fit with the dynamic pricing model. I also think this pricing should apply even if the reader edition were made from one edition of a book and the research edition made from a subsequent edition (same author) (I recognize that the 2nd edition of a title in a commentary series may not be the same author and essentially same content)