Hi Lars,
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 10:30 PM, Lars Aronssonlars@aronsson.se wrote:
I know many of you are interested in how Wikipedia's traditional competitors are doing, especially the unusual event that new print editions appear.
Thanks for your remarks on the situation in .se.
As you can see at http://info.eb.com/PDFs/EB_PrePub.pdf, Britannica will be selling a 2010-version of their 15th edition. The "fun fact" is to advertise with a biographical entry on the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. You can't make up stuff like that. According to http://www.caminfo.co.uk/pdfs/BRIT2010_001.pdf, they will tell you *how* to start a blog. Extrapolating from this, they will explain in their 2013/2014 edition to start a twitter account. It must be sad for encyclopedia authors to see how PR is forced to focus on "brand new facts", an area where the failing promises of an (printed) encyclopedia are most visible.
Size, price, features and most of the content seem to be unchanged from former versions.
Given EBIs still-strong position in libraries, they might have a financial basis that will allow them to continue that path for a while.
Mathias