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After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses

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Re: After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses

#61

Post by waterlesscloud »

bartread wrote: post #53
waterlesscloud wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was huge value in thumbing through these as a child. We could never afford the set, but I had used copies of individual volumes and I spent many, many hours reading random topics. You just don't get that kind of discovery in an online version. Maybe you could, but you don't.

Seriously? YOU don't? You've obviously never experienced the Wikipedia death spiral: 30 browser tabs open all on unrelated Wikipedia pages. It was dangerously close to an addiction for me at one point and the amount of random crap I now know it irritates me I'm still so poor at pub quizes. There's probably some Godwin's Law equivalent where once you've opened a tab relating to Hitler or the Nazis, having started off…

The problem is that you're selecting the topics. The value of a physical encyclopedia is that they've selected the topics and you're browsing them at random.

Re: After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses

#62

Post by ghaff »

cpeterso wrote: post #47

It's too bad Encyclopaedia Britannica won't collaborate with Wikipedia. The company could bring their authors, reviewers, content, and experience from a sinking ship to an information platform that is successful but could be even better.

And who would pay for those authors, reviewers, content, and experience? Those Britannica contributors interested in contributing to Wikipedia can certainly do so--and I assume there are some who are. But I'm also sure that many contributed to Britannica because they were paid and, for better or worse, there's no model to monetizing Wikipedia contributions.

Re: After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses

#63

Post by meric »

rwmj wrote: post #7
cont4gious wrote: post #2

This is a fantastic example of a company embracing technology (or more generally newer forms of business) and not holding on to the "old way" of doing business. The fact that their printed volumes account for a negligible amount of their revenue shows that this wasn't even a spur of the moment decision, they saw the writing on the wall a long time ago and planned accordingly.

It's a terrible example (or perhaps a "fantastic" example of a company avoiding reality for eons). The writing has been on the wall for EB for at least 15 years, in fact there was even a book written about it: http://www.amazon.com/Blown-Bits-Economics-Information-Trans... How do we know they're even going to make money now?

"About 85 percent of revenues come from selling curriculum products in subjects like math, science and the English language; the remainder comes from subscriptions to the Web site, the company said."

They weren't avoiding reality. It looks like they've planned this years ago, but kept printing encyclopaedias while they were still profitable.

Let's say after the year 2015, demand for non-tablets will begin to reduce by 50% per year. Does that mean companies should stop making non-tablets in the year 2015? For some, maybe. What if several competitors has already exited the market (as had happened here), should you exit too? If your competitors left that means although while the pie has gotten smaller, you're getting a larger slice of it. Stay while it's profitable.

Re: After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses

#64

Post by spindritf »

redthrowaway wrote: post #45
why-el wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this being upvoted?

Pure entertainment value. Either that, or grellas is operating a voting ring...

Well, he is a part of tptacek's conspi^W must-read list https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tptacek

Re: After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses

#65

Post by colomon »

cpeterso wrote: post #47

It's too bad Encyclopaedia Britannica won't collaborate with Wikipedia. The company could bring their authors, reviewers, content, and experience from a sinking ship to an information platform that is successful but could be even better.

"About half a million households pay a $70 annual fee that includes access to the full database of articles, videos, original documents and access to mobile applications." That's $35 million a year, which is not as good as the best year of the print version (which would have $150 million in sales if I'm figuring correctly), but is still not too shabby.

Re: After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses

#66

Post by colomon »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #61
bartread wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? YOU don't? You've obviously never experienced the Wikipedia death spiral: 30 browser tabs open all on unrelated Wikipedia pages. It was dangerously close to an addiction for me at one point and the amount of random crap I now know it irritates me I'm still so poor at pub quizes. There's probably some Godwin's Law equivalent where once you've opened a tab relating to Hitler or the Nazis, having started off…

The problem is that you're selecting the topics. The value of a physical encyclopedia is that they've selected the topics and you're browsing them at random.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Random

Re: After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses

#68

Post by bcjordan »

grellas wrote: post #31

It is easy to disparage the Encyclopedia Britannica from a modern perspective - out-of-step, overpriced, outmaneuvered by competitors - but there is a great sadness here at the demise of something that represented an effort by western scholars to "capture the world's knowledge." Imagine assembling a "A" team of scholars and scientists, getting them to make substantial, substantive contributions in each of their respe…

I like to think that you're trying to make the point that just as a startup team is more important than their idea, the quality of a thoughtful Encyclopedia Brittanica post is more important than its placement.

Re: After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses

#69

Post by fiatmoney »

Why not move to an on-demand printing model, I wonder? I can understand not devoting a large amounts of resources towards typesetting and storing new editions, but it does seem (at least from the comments here, and anecdotally elsewhere) that people enjoy older editions as objects d'art. There might very well be a market for selling, eg, "new" 1912 editions if you can avoid the warehousing overhead and ship them direct.

Licensing opportunity, perhaps?

Re: After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses

#70

Post by jdpage »

why-el wrote: post #40
grellas wrote: post #31

It is easy to disparage the Encyclopedia Britannica from a modern perspective - out-of-step, overpriced, outmaneuvered by competitors - but there is a great sadness here at the demise of something that represented an effort by western scholars to "capture the world's knowledge." Imagine assembling a "A" team of scholars and scientists, getting them to make substantial, substantive contributions in each of their respe…

Is this being upvoted?

I would guess because it's a pretty good comment, and everyone knows where it is supposed to be.
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