[Foundation-l] Stopping the presses: Britannica to stop printing books

Joan Goma jrgoma at gmail.com
Wed Mar 14 08:40:14 UTC 2012


> From: Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>        <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Cc: Wikipedia list <wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>,   English
>        Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Stopping the presses: Britannica to stop
>        printing        books
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>        <CAAtU9WK4DnYVgphPHjsASG8+MXx3pQX5Wj08n3n1An45d938QA at mail.gmail.com
> >
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>
> 2010's 32-volume set will be its last.  (Now I want to get one, to
> replace my old set!)  Future versions will be digital only.
>
>
> http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/13/encyclopedia-britannica-halts-print-publication
>
> Britannica president Jorge Cauz notes that their revenue from the
> online encyclopedia was already 15x that of the print version -- 15%
> of their total, compared to 1%.  Most of their revenue for years has
> come from other targeted educational materials.  As he says in the
> Guardian,
>
> "Today our digital database is much larger than what we can fit in the
> print set. And it is up to date because we can revise it within
> minutes anytime we need to, and we do it many times each day."
>
> SJ.
>

Unfortunatelly they still not realize that if published using a free
licence compatible with Wikipedeia their income would be even 15 times
larger.


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