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How The Web Ruined The Encyclopedia Business

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the damn-you-internet-age dept.

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."

3 of 623 comments (clear)

  1. Something that should've been in the original post by sik0fewl · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wikipedia. I'm sure everybody knows about it by now, but it's a great source of information for just about anything you can imagine.

    --
    I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
  2. You are correct by Raul654 · · Score: 5, Informative

    (Full disclosure - I'm a wikipedia admin) - The premise of Wikipedia is that you can write an article on everything. Unlike major encyclopedias (which might go through 2 or 3 pairs of eyes tops), though, everything on Wikipedia gets peer reviewed many times over. I've seen articles where several dozen people who have modified it. In and of itself, that's an effective form of peer review.

    --


    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
  3. Wasn't this one of the selling points of CD-ROMs? by sharkb8 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I seem to remember ads in 1994 you that could fit an ENTIRE ENCYCLOPEDIA onto just one CD-rom, and that it would also include movies, interactive pictures, etc?

    For bound encyclopedias, it's a cost/benefit analysis. For $1400, you can get 2 1/2 years of high speed internet access, with pretty much all the information you can handle. Encyclopedias are just too expensive for what you get.