Why Do I Need So Many Books?

| Fri, May 16, 2014 | Misc. 10

Logos Base PackagesWhen we talk about how big our libraries are, we sometimes get asked:

“Why would I need so many books? How could I possibly read them all?”

It’s a reasonable question.

There are 200 books in Starter, 2,500 in Portfolio, and more than 40,000 available altogether in Logos. We’re adding between 50 and 100 books each week. We’re regularly producing multivolume commentaries, big reference sets, and bundles with dozens or hundreds of books. It’s a lot of material.

The power of networks

When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, it was a technological marvel, but it was useless by itself.

So he added a second phone and connected the two. Now they worked—but only if they were connected. As more phones were added—three, four, five, ten, a hundred, a thousand—the phones stopped being as valuable as the network itself.

With a thousand phones, you can remove one without compromising the network: the network has become its own thing, which makes each individual phone more valuable.

The network adds more value than the phone has by itself.

Years ago, Bob Metcalfe quantified this. Metcalfe’s Law states that the value of a network is equal to the square of the size of the network:

“If there are n people in a network, and the value of the network to each of them is proportional to the number of other users, then the total value of the network (to all the users) is proportional to n * (n – 1) = n2 – n. If the value of a network to a single user is $1 for each other user on the network, then a network of size 10 has a total value of roughly $100. In contrast, a network of size 100 has a total value of roughly $10,000. A tenfold increase in the size of the network leads to a hundredfold increase in its value.”

As you add more nodes, the efficiency and value of the network increase exponentially.

So what does this have to do with Logos books?

LibraryConnectionsLogos books work the same way as Alexander Graham Bell’s connected telephones. The value of having a big library isn’t just in the books themselves. It’s in the network that connects them. And the more books you have, the bigger your network—and, by extension, the more valuable each piece of the network becomes.

Logos books are tightly linked to one another. Click a citation to access the source. Then click the Bible reference in the source to see the Greek text. Then click a Greek word to open your lexicon. Then click one of the examples of classic literature in the lexical entry to see the source. And repeat.

In the 59-volume Word Biblical Commentary, there are 1,279,318 links to thousands of books. When you consider Logos base packages that offer hundreds or thousands of books, we’re talking about a very, very large number of links. As the number of resources rises linearly, the number of links rises exponentially—along with the overall value of the library as a whole.

This is what makes Logos books different from print, not to mention from other ebook formats. Just like a disconnected phone isn’t as valuable as a connected one, a disconnected print edition or ebook isn’t as valuable as a connected one.

When you add a book to your library, you’re not just adding content to your library, like you would be if you placed a new print book on a shelf. Instead, you’re adding a new destination for thousands of links in your library that already exist right now.

Print books and other ebooks are the end product themselves. They have inherent value, but that’s it. Logos books, on the other hand, have not only the same inherent value as print, but also the networked value: they’re your entry into a massive, interconnected ecosystem of resources for Bible study, research, and more. This is what makes them so much more valuable than other editions.

So when you hear about a Logos user adding a 10-volume commentary set to their base package, it’s not because they want to read all 10 books. In fact, they might never read any of the books—not cover-to-cover, at least. Instead, they’re adding value to their whole library.

Build a bigger, smarter library

Right now, you can get a custom Logos 5 upgrade discount!

Get the most out of your library—check out your discount, and upgrade today.

The Price Has Dropped on the Oxford History of the Christian Church!

| Mon, February 24, 2014 | Misc.

oxford-history-of-the-christian-church (1)Pre-Pub prices usually start low and go up.

This is a rare exception: the Pre-Pub price on the Oxford History of the Christian Church has gone down!

We can now offer you an even lower price, but we don’t know how long this deal will last.

These are expensive, valuable volumes. Check out the numbers for yourself:

  • Normally, at full print list prices, you would pay more than $2,387.00 for the full set.
  • A while back, we looked around for the lowest prices available; the best deals we could find added up to $1,747.00.
  • Many of the individual volumes in this collection would cost you more than $100.00 each.
  • Three of these books list at over $200.00 each, all the way up to $255.00!

The main takeaway here is that these are important, sought-after volumes. People regularly pay hundreds of dollars for these books (and thousands of dollars for the set)—but now we’re able to offer the complete Oxford History of the Christian Church for $399.95.

Consider the price of the set, and think about how each of these books normally costs $100 to $300 each—if you’ve thought about getting only one or two of them, it’s a much better deal to pre-order the entire 16-volume set instead.

Not only will you get the books you want—you’ll also get everything the Oxford History of the Christian Church series has to offer.

And $399.95 is an even more amazing price when you consider the value of having these books in your digital library, with citations linked to their sources, powerful search features, automatic citations when you copy–paste, and so much more.

One other important thing to consider: we don’t know how long this price will last. This set could go into development tomorrow, next week, next month—we simply don’t know. And when it ships, the price will jump dramatically.

Pre-order now!

You have nothing to lose by pre-ordering. We won’t charge your card until the product ships (plus we’ll remind you a few weeks beforehand), and you can cancel at any time.

But you won’t always be able to get this set at this price, so don’t miss your opportunity—pre-order the Oxford History of the Christian Church now!

(If you’ve already pre-ordered, don’t worry—we’re still honoring our commitment that you’ll always get the best price by pre-ordering early. Your price has been automatically lowered to the new price, and there’s nothing you need to do to make sure you get the best deal.)

Behind the Scenes: Updates to the Word Biblical Commentary

| Thu, February 13, 2014 | Misc.

word-biblical-commentaryOne of the biggest benefits of owning Logos resources is that you’re constantly getting free updates and improvements.

Have you ever wondered about what goes into updates like these? We thought we’d give you a behind-the-scenes look at the recent update to the Word Biblical Commentary.

Hundreds of thousands of links

Logos books are tightly linked to all the other books in your library. We’re always looking for ways to make these connections even tighter by updating, improving, and adding links.

Here are a few examples of the kinds of things we link—not just in the WBC, but in all your books:

  • When you click a Scripture reference, you’re taken to your preferred Bible translation, or the Greek or Hebrew text.
  • When you click a bibliographic citation, you can instantly open the cited work to get the full context. (If you’ve ever seen something quoted out of context, you know why this is valuable.)
  • When you click a Greek or Hebrew word, you can get the definition, and then go to your preferred lexicon for more.
  • When you view the table of contents, you can click chapter and section headings to navigate to those destinations in the book.
  • When hover over an abbreviation, the full title appears. For example, when N. T. Wright refers to NTPG, you’ll instantly see that it stands for New Testament and the People of God. With print books or other ebook formats, you would have to flip to the front of the book to see what the abbreviation stood for.
  • When the author of the book refers to what they said in the previous chapter, you can click the reference—say, “previous chapter”—to be taken there. Your Logos books have context-sensitive linking: only a human who is familiar with the work would know what “previous chapter” is referring to and know where to link it.
  • When the text refers to a footnote somewhere else in the book, or something said on another page, you can click the link to be taken there.

There are lots of other things we link. Many are obscure, and most you don’t notice. But they’re all important.

Here’s how many links are in the updated version of the Word Biblical Commentary:

  • 131,893 links to external resources, including 3,212 new links. Many of these links point to other books.
  • 739,341 data-type references—links to special data. For example, if the author refers to Genesis 1:1, the link is a data-type reference, not a normal link. This is because, when you click it, the software takes into consideration things like your preferred Bible translation. The short story is that a data-type reference is like a normal link, except with lots of things going on under the hood.
  • 357,373 links within resources: indexes, footnotes, links to abbreviations, links to table of contents, and so on.
  • 50,711 milestone links, which help you navigate your resources more quickly and help provide more accurate data when you right-click.

What about typos?

There are 22,165,650 words in the Word Biblical Commentary. Since we last updated WBC, we’ve received 11,243 typo reports. Of 11,243 typos reported, we fixed 9,939. In other words, the WBC went from a 99.955% accuracy rate to nearly 100%. (We’re hesitant to say we hit 100%, because with 22,165,650 words, it’s possible we still missed one.)

(If you’re doing the math, it sounds like we left 1,304 reported typos. Here’s why.)

The best part for you? All the updates are free!

There’s nothing extra you need to do to get these updates. If you already own the WBC, they’ve already been delivered to you. It’s automatic, and it doesn’t cost a dime.

The WBC is only one of thousands of products we’ve updated in the past year. We have an entire team in one of our departments working exclusively on improving existing resources.

The result of these constant improvements is that, over time, your library is getting smarter, better, and faster. It’s becoming a more effective tool for the work you do every day.

We’re constantly improving Logos resources

When you buy a resource in Logos, you’re not just getting a digital text that somebody built and forgot about.

You’re getting a product from a company that’s investing in improvement every day.

Why? Because we know that the extra updates might make all the difference when you’re working on your next sermon or preparing your next lesson—and that makes a very real difference in peoples’ lives.

Get the WBC today!

If you don’t yet own the Word Biblical Commentary, what are you waiting for?

Get the set today for $63.33 per month with a 12-month interest-free payment plan. This is ideal if you have a book budget, because it allows you to spread your payments out over a few months without having to worry about accumulating interest.

You’ll get the most up-to-date version—and you’ll always have the latest and greatest version for as long as you own it.

Don’t wait—get the WBC now!

What People Are Saying about Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary

| Tue, February 11, 2014 | Products

lewis-and-shorts-latin-dictionaryIn case you haven’t seen the comments on Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary, here’s what some of you are saying:

“This is the most accessible and comprehensive of Latin dictionaries and at a price which should be an inducement to anyone who wants the best value for the least outlay. . . . I’ve [had a] bid on this since December 2011, please get it into production!”

“This is THE Latin Dictionary—and while we’re all rating something we didn’t use in Logos, I compared the sample pages to the current edition as sold on Amazon for three-digit prices (paper!) and found no differences. I’m in at the maximum bidding price—let’s get this into production!”

“This is a massive resource (those 2019 pages are really tiny print on gigantic pages). It is also easily the best Latin English dictionary ever made. . . . I can imagine it takes quite a bit of effort to tag something so large.”

“Check how much it costs in paper, and then remember how useful it would be in digital format.”

“This is a stellar dictionary—and at anything under $50 it’s an extremely low price, considering all the ways that you can leverage this dictionary in Logos. A hardcopy, it should be remembered, goes for at least twice that price. And no hardcopy can even begin to compete with what we can do with a Logos dictionary.”

Imagine you’re in the thick of writing a research paper, or up to your neck working through the Church Fathers, and you come across a Latin word. Maybe you know enough Latin to get you through most of the time—but not this time. Or maybe you don’t know Latin at all, but the word might make or break your argument, or might be the perfect anecdote to add to your sermon. You simply don’t know.

What’s a dictionary like this worth to you?

In print, you’d pay more than a hundred dollars. Or you’d have to track down a copy at a library. (Or you’d have to settle for an inferior dictionary.) And then you’d have to navigate your way through more than two thousand pages of dense text to find the entry you’re looking for. There’s a cost to each of those options—not only in dollars, but also in your time.

For something that’s worth this much, $24 is a steal—especially when you consider the value of the tagged, robust digital edition, fully integrated with your library and connected to Logos’ study tools.

Maybe it’s not for you. If that’s the case, don’t bid. Spend your money wisely.

But if you think you’ll ever need a dictionary like this, remember that it’s only available for $24 while it’s on Community Pricing, so now is the time to get it.

And if you’ve already bid on the product, leave your own comment at the bottom of the product page and encourage others to get it at the best price while they still can!

Get the Newest Books at the Lowest Prices

| Thu, November 7, 2013 | Misc.

Logos PrePubThe Pre-Publication program (or “Pre-Pub” for short) gives you the chance to push new books into Logos at the lowest possible prices.

Logos books are more than ordinary ebooks, which are essentially just print books on a screen.

Logos books are robust digital resources. They’re built by real humans—not computer scripts—who know that the phrase “first verse of the first epistle of John” needs to link to 1 John 1:1; that’s just one example of the thousands of decisions that only a real person can make when building a digital text. The result? You get high-quality digital editions that work across all your devices and with all our tools.

As you can imagine, building these kinds of digital editions is very expensive for us. And it’s an even bigger investment when you consider that we ship thousands of new books every year. That’s why, before we invest the resources in building a digital edition, we post the book on Pre-Pub at an extra-low price to see if there’s enough interest.

Or, to put it more briefly, with Pre-Pub:

  • You get the chance to pre-order the newest books at the best prices.
  • We can rest assured that our investment in building new books will benefit the most people.

Six things you need to know about Pre-Pub

  1. You get the lowest prices. In exchange for pre-ordering early—and helping us determine whether we should produce a Logos edition—we reward you with a lower price. In just about every instance, the Pre-Pub price is the lowest price ever for a product.
  2. Prices go up, but they don’t go down. As books get closer to meeting 100% of their costs—and when they go over 100%—prices often go up. If you pre-order early, you’ll be locked in at your price, even if the price goes up later. This means you shouldn’t wait to pre-order something you’ve got your eye on: the price could go up next week or next month—or even this afternoon.
  3. When you pre-order, we don’t charge your credit card. A pre-order is simply a reserved spot at the best price. We’ll only charge your card when we build the Logos edition and deliver it to you, and we’ll be sure to remind you a couple weeks beforehand.
  4. You can cancel at any time. You have nothing to lose by pre-ordering something you’ve got your eye on and then changing your mind later. And by pre-ordering, you’ll lock in today’s price even if the price goes up tomorrow.
  5. You get to be one of the first people to get the new resource. As soon as we produce the book, we deliver it to you and it downloads automatically. You’ll be able to access it on all your devices the moment it’s ready.
  6. You get to help Logos decide which resources to produce next. Products that move over 100% get into the production queue. If there’s a product under 100% you want to see in our format, your pre-order is your vote to move it closer to the front of the line. And it’s not always enough to place a pre-order for yourself—it’s also important that you tell your friends. Even something as simple as dropping a note on Facebook or Twitter can get the few extra orders needed to move something into production.

How to make sure you never miss another Pre-Pub deal

Because Pre-Pub prices go up over time, it’s important to keep up with the newest books and get in early. But with hundreds of new books going up every week, this can be a challenge.

That’s why we created an email list to keep you up to date on all the latest products.

When you sign up, you’ll get one email each weekday morning with a list of the previous day’s new books. You’ll be able to quickly scan the newest products, and you’ll never miss out on the best prices.

Sign up today!





Get Introductory Discounts on New Baker Collections!

| Tue, October 22, 2013 | Products

Over the past year, we’ve made hundreds of new books from Baker Academic available in our format. If you don’t already have these books, now’s your chance to pick up a few bundles at discounted introductory prices.

You can get the following collections on sale through October 31—come Friday, November 1, the prices go up.

If you missed these titles as Pre-Pubs, or you’re simply looking to bulk up your library and get some nice discounts, this is your chance to get near-Pre-Pub savings on bestselling Baker collections. If you got some of these deals but missed a few, this is your second chance to complete your Baker library.

You’ll get an extra discount for any books you already own—just visit the product pages to see your special price!

  • With the Baker Gospel Studies Collection, you’ll get every volume on the Gospels in the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament—David L. Turner on Matthew, Robert H. Stein on Mark, Darrell L. Block’s two massive volumes on Luke, and Andreas Köstenberger on John. You’ll also get every volume on the Gospels in the Understanding the Bible Commentary series—formerly known as the New International Biblical Commentary. In addition to books from these sets, you’ll get Craig Keener’s book on miracles and his two-volume commentary on John, plus books by Brad H. Young, Francis J. Moloney, Graham H. Twelftree, and others.
  • The Walter A. Elwell Reference Collection contains the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, the Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, and other bestselling reference titles from Baker.
  • With the Baker Studies in Apologetics Collection, you’ll get books by Norman Geisler, Paul Copan, William Lane Craig, and others, plus Michael L. Brown’s four-volume Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus. Whether you’re defending your faith, building up your own worldview, or simply wondering how to engage others’ questions, this collection is the perfect starting point.
  • If you’re looking for the ultimate preaching-resource library, you can’t do better than the Baker Studies on Preaching Collection. It contains books on every preaching topic you can think of: method, delivery, exegesis, and theology of preaching. You’ll also get two books’ worth of sermon illustrations—2,250 total.
  • The Baker Studies in Counseling Collection gives you key introductions by Paul D. Meier, Frank B. Minirth, and others. You’ll also get the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling, the Baker Encyclopedia of Psychology and Counseling, Thomas C. Oden’s four-volume Classical Pastoral Care, and much more.

Remember, these discounts expire on October 31 at midnight (PDT)—act quickly to get near-Pre-Pub prices!

New Updates to the Tim Keller Sermon Archive

| Thu, October 10, 2013 | Products

This past weekend, we rolled out another series of updates to the Tim Keller Sermon Archive. If you own the archive, you should have already received your update (and downloaded your new resources) automatically. If not, simply restart your software!

One of the benefits of Logos is that you always have the latest updates to all your resources. In this case, the update includes tons of new content; in other cases, we make updates behind the scenes that you probably don’t notice, like adding links to resources in your library or adding new milestones for better navigation. The cumulative effect of all these updates is that your Logos experience always gets faster and better.

If you don’t yet own the Tim Keller Sermon Archive, now is the perfect time to pick it up. You’ll get all the sermons already available today—including all the new content—plus free updates in the coming months as we continue to transcribe and digitize additional Keller sermons.

Get it now!

Add Over 1,500 Commentaries to Your Library

| Fri, August 2, 2013 | Products

the-complete-classic-commentaries-bundleOver the past few years, we’ve made more than a thousand commentaries available through Community Pricing at big discounts. On top of that, for many years we’ve had several classic sets available.

Now, we’ve combined all these commentaries into one 1,537-volume bundle. It’s the biggest collection of commentaries we’ve ever offered!

What’s included

You’ll get every commentary in the public domain available in our format—from the early church and the medieval period all the way up to the flourishing of biblical scholarship in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Here’s a snapshot:

  • Commentaries by the giants of church history, like John Calvin, Martin Luther, Gregory the Great, John Wesley, John Owen, A. W. Pink, J. C. Ryle, Charles Spurgeon, G. Campbell Morgan, and many others
  • Every commentary from important classic sets, like Meyer’s commentary, the Pulpit Commentary, the Cambridge Bible, Barnes’ Notes, Lange’s Commentary, Charles Simeon’s Horae Homiletica, Wesley’s commentary, and more
  • Dozens of individual commentaries on every book of the Bible

    • [Read more...]

5 Years of New Testament Discourse: Celebrate by Saving 25%

| Sat, July 20, 2013 | Products

lexham-discourse-greek-new-testament-bundleFive years ago this week, we released a product that has changed how pastors and scholars read and study the New Testament.

The Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament has helped thousands of people get behind the text and study the discourse features and devices that speakers and writers of all languages use to convey meaning.

These are devices we use (and rarely notice) every day in our conversation—and the writers of the New Testament used them, too.

Examples of how it works

  1. In Luke 10:2, Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” There’s a word there designed to create anticipation, but that’s usually left untranslated. It’s a word absent from most English translations, and even if you know Greek, you’re likely to skip over it. But it’s an important discourse device that effectively makes it “although the harvest is plentiful . . .”
  2. All over the Gospels, Jesus says things like “truly, truly” or “truly I say to you.” These words don’t mean that what Jesus is saying is more or less true than words that aren’t prefaced by this phrase. Instead, “truly, truly” is primarily meant to get the audience’s attention and highlight the thing that comes next. It’s a discourse device you’ve probably read a hundred times but haven’t noticed. In the Lexham Greek Discourse New Testament, it will be plainly marked for you.

    3. [Read more...]

Get 30% Off the Oxford History of the Christian Church

| Sat, July 6, 2013 | Products

oxford-history-of-the-christian-church

William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”

Nowhere is this more true than in the history of the church.

Why church history is important

The study of church history involves conversation with our brothers and sisters across time: how they read Scripture, how they wrestled with doctrine, how they worshiped, prayed, and practiced Christian formation. What were their challenges? What were their struggles and doubts?

Studying church history is important because studying the past helps us discern how God is guiding the church in the present. Often, our hopes are their hopes; our doubts are their doubts; our struggles are their struggles.

The church spans time and culture more, perhaps, than any other institution. Learning its history is vitally important. [Read more...]