When I tell people I work for Encyclopædia Britannica, they typically have one of two responses:
(1) When are you guys gonna get a web site?
or
(2) Do you guys still make books?
Glenn Hauman is apparently one of the latter, when he writes “they stopped publishing a paper edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica a few years back.” As far as I can tell, that statement isn’t true.
This came from an article I remembered from 1999, which the Wayback Machine has helpfully archived:
Encyclopaedia Turns Its Back On Books
Encyclopaedia Britannica announced that it has stopped printing books because its multimedia CD-Rom version is a far bigger seller (July 27, 1999). The ending of a tradition reaching back more than 200 years came about because the company now sells only a minimal number of books, compared with 150,000 CD-Roms every year in Europe alone. A full set of volumes costs £900 while the computerised version, containing the same information, is priced at just £89
James Strachan, the UK managing director, said: ‘There are no plans to print any more books, although that doesn’t mean we never would if consumers demanded them.
‘But the economics of the encyclopedia business mean it is far more profitable for us to concentrate on electronic publishing rather than book publishing. ‘He said far more people buy the computerised version than ever bought the books, and consumers also find it more user-friendly.
Mr Strachan added: ‘I hope traditionalists will recognise that we can’t produce Encyclopaedia Britannica at a loss. ‘I think this shows the beginnings of a revolution that nobody properly understands yet
‘What is important for us is the thing that constitutes Britannica – 45 million words – are still exactly the same. What has changed is the way people use them.
So it appears that they stopped in Britain, but not worldwide. And for all I know, they may have started up again in the UK.
On the other hand, when you consider there’s a 6000% price difference between the printed edition and the CD-ROM, you really have to wonder who’s buying the paper edition nowadays…
(And yes, I knew they had a web site. I even remember the feature they had for a while deconstructing all of the obscure references Dennis Miller made on Monday Night Football.)