Previously on Oikos online store, now on Bobshop
Hi, so here we are - on the day of the big switch over from the oikostore, (as we have come to know it), to now buying books on Bobshop. But, we have gone to the back-end on Bobshop and included the words ‘previously sold on Oikos Store’ with each title, so that if you put in your search on Bobshop the word, ‘Oikos’, you should be able to easily find what you looking for.
Also, please remember, the Oikos Family Ministry support remains the same, in that the oikosfamily.co.za website has not changed and the Oikos YouTube channel and Facebook etc continues as is.
As mentioned in previous newsletters, there are naturally going to be some adjustments. I titled last weekend newsletter ‘searching for Oikos books’. So you can always go back to that and read, or listen to, the explanations and the help given there.
Also, please also remember that we are here to help so if you need some assistance you can either call 031 828 2462, and hope it works! Our phone call connectivity seems to be getting more challenging instead of less challenging these days! But you can also email, help@oikosfamily.co.za with any questions and so on.
Last week, when I was explaining how to find books on bobshop i used a few example but felt that it was enough to give the general idea so today I thought to give you a few more examples considering that now the switch has happened. So, try this for starters. Go to bobshop.co.za and put Dr Jay Wile, in the search field. You will then see all Dr Jay Wiles science books. It’s that simple.
You will not however see the science audiobooks, but don’t worry because they are available for you wherever audiobooks are sold. So you can go to google and search for Dr Wile science audiobooks and you will be given a few options of where to go to purchase it. With the audiobook being a digital product it is instant, as in no courier fees and so on, but of course you know that already, but why it is better to get your audiobooks this way, via searching on google, is that you can choose a site where audiobooks are sold, as in, that is what that company does, they sell audiobooks. Consequently they constantly keeping the technology for this kind of product up to date. This is another good reason why the switch has been made to bobshop because their focus is ecommerce so they will grow and develop within the ecommerce world which, as I’ve mentioned in previous newsletters, we here at oikos cannot give the same attention to such developments.
We have also discovered that audiobook sites are offering subscription based access to audiobooks. Which means that a person can subscribe for however long they need to, to get the audiobooks they need and build their audiobook library for a fraction of what is would otherwise cost to purchase one audiobook at a time. Yet another reason why we have thought how this can be a way to be more helpful to parents because in the long run, or in fact in the immediate, the costs to parents building their audiobooks home libraries will be more considerably less.
The audiobooks that were on the oikos online store were not available via a subscription bases, to achieve this would be a huge costly undertaking and why, when there is a choice of a few others that have already done this. We however will continue to produce audiobooks for you, for example right now James is busy narrating Dr Jay’s Science in the Scientific Revolution. So if, or when, you may need a Dr Jay Wile science audiobook then you can get it as i have explained.
In the last few years we have been finding it increasingly difficult to keep providing the physical books and you would have noticed that Math-U-See have developed the Digital Pack which means parents do not need to purchase the parent/instruction book, or the lessons on DVD because the DVD’s are being phased out and the manipulatives are difficult to import, but they are now available to see, which I know is not the same as touch and feel but it is at least better than not having at all. If you’ve been following this newsletter you would have heard the sad tale of our ‘missing manipulatives’. But now, thank you Math-U-See for developing the Digital Pack for families, had they not done as such then things would be looking rather dismal. We are however continuing to search for the missing manipulatives, after all they were fully paid for before leaving USA shores so it is simple stewardship to keep the investigations going, and we continue to provide the DVD’s for as long as we can. And, we continue to produce whatever we can in the way of audiobooks so that if the physical book is difficult to obtain then there is the audiobook.
All this to say that whatever changes are being done it is with an objective to keep helping even though sometimes that comes in ways which do not always seem helpful at the time. We truly do trust that these changes are going to be for the good in the long term, that is our hope.
The question regarding the Bela Bill and Oikos being able to keep providing the books keeps coming up, so here is a one minute video to answer that. Even though now the books are available for purchase on Bobshop, this answer is applicable.