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How The Web Ruined The Encyclopedia Business
prostoalex writes "Don't remember an encyclopedia salesman knocking at your door lately? Turns out, fewer Americans are purchasing layaway plans for heavy-bound multiple-volume sets (once sold at $1,400) and turning to the Web for answers, according to AP/Miami Herald. What's more interesting is that even the software encyclopedias are not selling as well, with Google changing the landscape of finding good reference information. 'Microsoft's $70 Encarta is the best seller but industrywide sales for encyclopedia software fell 7.3 percent in 2003 from 2002,' says Associated Press article."
Maybe people just stopped looking things up!
Life in Orange County
The Encylopedia Industry just needs a lobby. How about EIAA? Sue and whine when your business model fails to make money. It's the American Way.
You probably shouldn't click this.
Candle sales down... candlemakers blame the electric light bulb.
the candlemaker lobby are asking for sanctions to keep the vital candle market afloat.
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
I'd pay money for an encyclopedia that didn't have an entry about goatse.
Trust me.
the web has my blog. britannica doesn't. the web is winning. isn't it obvious what people want?
2 1337 4 u!
(Scene : A front door of a flat. A man walks up to the door and rings bell. He is dressed smartly, like a Salesman.)
Salesman: Burglar! (longish pause while he waits, he rings again) Burglar! (woman appears at other side of door)
Woman: Yes?
Salesman: Burglar, madam.
Woman: What do you want?
Salesman: I want to come in and steal a few things, madam.
Woman: Are you an encyclopaedia salesman?
Salesman: No madam, I'm a burglar, I burgle people.
Woman: I think you're an encyclopaedia salesman.
Salesman: Oh I'm not, open the door, let me in please.
Woman: lf l let you in you'll sell me encyclopaedias.
Salesman: I won't, madam. I just want to come in and ransack the flat. Honestly.
Woman: Promise. No encyclopaedias?
Salesman: None at all.
Woman: All right. (she opens door) You'd better come in then.
(Salesman enters through door.)
Salesman: Mind you I don't know whether you've really considered the advantages of owning a really fine set of modern encyclopaedias...(he pockets valuable) You know, they can really do you wonders.
(Cut back to man at desk.)
Man: That man was a successful encyclopaedia salesman. But not all encyclopaedia salesmen are successful. Here is an unsuccessful encyclopaedia salesman.
(Cut to very tall building; a body flies out of a high window and plummets. Cut back to man at desk.)
Man: Now here are two unsuccessful encyclopaedia salesmen.
(Cut to a different tall building; two bodies fly out of a high window. Cut back to man at desk.)
Man: I think there's a lesson there for all of us.
Encyclopedias for home schooled kids whose parents are afraid of the Net.
They'll save a lot of pages by replacing many of the articles with references like "Good children do not ask about such things" and "Your parents will tell you on your wedding day" and "It's only a theory."
A friend's kid turned in a report on General Lee full of references to a 'Boss Hogg', a guy named 'Roscoe P. Coltrane', and some woman named 'Daisy', and it turns out that wasn't what the teacher had in mind.
I'm shocked! Old businesses with a strong attachment to their traditional business model are finding it difficult to change, you say? And to add injury to insult, you also tell me that they're suffering economically for this very reason? I can hardly believe it. Why, next you'll tell me that our beloved American recording industry has also fallen prey to the ogre that is technology, and that the telephone companies are having to scramble to avoid obsolescence...
RIAA claims decrease in Encarta due to illegal downloading and swapping.
The Goatse article was Wikipedia's 7th most active article in February, with 24,425 hits.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Such as remembering the proper spellings of homonyms. :)
Encyclopedias hold a special place in my heart. When I was entering college, some of my older relatives decided to dump, excuse me, bless me with their collection of encyclopedias from the early 80s. Ah, yes, these 15 year old fountains of knowledge would really be a blessing for me to get the most out of my college education.
Years later, as I was cleaning out the house, I came across a dusty pile of now 20-year old encyclopedias. I was going to throw them out, but then said relatives looked on me with disdain, at how I was throwing away their precious gifts. They said they would take them, rather than allow them to be thrown away. 2 months later, when they never came to pick them up, I threw them out. And they've never asked about them again. Although, knowing these relatives, they'd probably demand I pay them the "fair" value of the books. So, not what they'd be worth to someone who lives in the real world (absolutely nothing), but the price they paid for the books + interest + inflation. Gotta love family...
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
still feel bad for causing someone to lose their job.
Don't worry about it. He's probably the CEO of a company like SCO right now.
I'm not a super genius
Clearly.
Having access to information is a wonderful thing, but that access doesn't make the user somehow any more able to use those facts than they otherwise would have been. It simply means that you can copy-paste some text from a web site, not that you actually learn anything from doing so.
If you "look like a fricken star" then I'd have to say that your peers and employer are clearly sad ignoramuses who can't tell the difference between someone who can find information and someone who understands the information they've found.
My experience that weened me from using encyclopedias. It was 95 or 96 and my teacher for an international business class in college wanted us to do research on a country of our choise using only the Internet. This was a several day assignment, and part way through the first class I got called out by the teacher in front of the students because I was photoshopping game pieces for one of the civ games. Conversation went roughly like this:
Teacher. Onyxruby, are you done already?
Me. Yup
Teacher. Really? Just where did you get all information?
Me. CIA
Classroom. Laughter breaks out.
Teacher. Your telling me you got information from the CIA?
Me. That's what I just said.
Teacher. Care to share this treasure trove with the class.
Me. Sure.
Teacher gets back there expecting to see that I'm bullshitting her. I show her:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
Everything she wanted from per capita income to the number of tv's was in there. Look on her face went from sheer disbelief to righteous indignation as she started writing it on the white board for the whole class to read. I haven't looked back at encyclopedias since.
I haven't seen one since the 70's actually, well before the Internet was mainstream. I tend to think that their business model was out of touch before the mid-late 80's.
I used to think the transparencies of the Human Body were really cool, though.
Now, if only I could get rid of all the friggin' Kirby Salesmen that keep bugging me at all hours!!
If this article confuses you, don't worry. It was posted yesterday in a much clearer fashion.
Being the nerd that I was, I would randomly pick a volume and then random turn to a page and read an article about something.
I used to do that. Drove my younger sister nuts.
"What are you reading?"
"M."
"You're just *reading* the whole thing?"
"Yep. I really liked 'L'. This is the sequel."
"You are SO WEIRD!"
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Yes, it was rather funny when I bought my set of Britannica.
I made three mjor steps when I came into this city (1) I found a woman and married her (2) she found a house and we bought it and (3) I tracked down an encyclopeadia salesman and bought a set.
Well - #3 was the hardest. I managed to find them but had to call long distance as I recall. Eventually this lead to a referal here in the city and a younge chap showed up at the door. He advised that he had to go through his speal. I advised I wasn't interested in his speal - I wanted to look at the covers and the color.
A few minutes later his jaw drops in AMASMENT and he askes "Do you mean you are really going to buy them?" to which I answered: "Well, if you ever show me the damn covers - yes!"
And he says something like: "The company says I always have to go through this speal... This is the EASIEST sale I've ever made!!!"
They only cost about 1 1/2 months salary. I still look at that set with pride. And they are used alot as well. Of all the investments I've made, my encyclopeadias are one of the best.
I wish I had a peer-reviewed BS detector.
I guess we know where the lawyers for the RIAA, MPAA, etc. will be looking for business next.
...is that you thought to yourself "that's sexy, I'm gonna whack off to this" while I thought "I bet he has a prolapsed rectum and cannot walk without shitting in his pants."
yes, I do like responding to my precious little trolls. bite me.
"I always wondered where my mandibula was!"
He was probably an encyclopedia salesman.
Watch out for antique versions. I was staying with some friends who had a quiz sheet from the local church. I thought that one of the answers was the atomic number of gold (79). So, just to confirm it, I grabbed a volume of Brittanica off their bookshelf and looked up gold. There was every piece of information in there except the atomic number. Puzzled, I looked at the date on the cover - 1894! I think atomic numbers came in around the 1930s.
Phil.
Sounds like my house.
"What're you reading?"
"The dictionary. 's pretty good."
After this much eccentricity my family usually gives up, so no-one ever discovered that I only actually read the stuff before and after the alphabetical list of words. And they're amazed when I can read the phonetic spellings ("it doesn't say how to read them").
I works well in scrabble though.
"Go look it up."
"It's not in there."
"How d'you know?"
"I've read it."
Why is anything anything?
But how long will it take for something like the Chewbacca Defense to make it into Encarta?
Wikipedia rules!!
Really? One of my roommates during college(about 5 years ago) was a vacuum cleaner salesman. Made me listen to the whole spiel for practice, including dumping sand all over the place. Only upside was free use of the demo machine, which was, amusingly, an upgrade to the model being sold so the sand trick would actually work.