It was first published between 17 in Edinburgh, Scotland as three volumes. The Britannica is the oldest English-language encyclopaedia still being produced. The iPad, Kindle and Nook claim another victim. Visitors to Britannica’s website in 2011 topped 450 million. 7 million sets have been sold in 244 years.
By 1996, that number had fallen to just 40,000. Jorge Cauz, Encyclopedia Britannica’s president, said the top year for the printed encyclopedia was 1990, when 120,000 sets were sold. Normally selling 60 a week, after the announcement, orders jumped to a 140 a day.Īn ad for the 1913 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica Publishers, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., say they are overwhelmed with orders for the final edition and they are down to fewer than 800 copies of the $1,395 set. After announcing the news in mid-March, the publishers are saying copies of the 32-volume set are flying of the shelves.
#Encyclopedia britannica final print edition update#
“But facts always matter, no matter what form they take.Read Time:1 Minute, 34 Second After 244 years of continuous publication, the current update of Encyclopaedia Britannica print edition will be its last. “I think Wikipedia sees us as a relic of an old era,” he said. And he hopes consumers will be willing to pay for that. But above all, he knows that the most important thing is to produce an Encyclopedia Britannica with accurate and up-to-date information. It’s the murmur of society, a million voices rather than a single informed one.”Ĭauz and his team will be sprucing up the company’s website in the coming weeks, in an effort to make it more interactive. By moving online, that’s one issue the Encyclopedia Britannica’s creators will no longer have to contend with.Ĭauz calls Wikipedia a “wonderful technology for collecting everything from great insights to lies and innuendos.” He adds, “It’s not all bad or all good, just uneven. However, printed encyclopedias face a similar problem – even before the ink’s dried, information can be out of date. The vast majority of its revenue comes from online educational products and services. Even the online version is hardly a big revenue generator, making up just 15 percent of the company’s income. I think outsiders are more nostalgic about the books than I am.”Ĭauz said that despite its reputation, the print version of the encyclopedia accounts for a mere 1 percent of the company’s total sales. “Everyone will want to call this the end of an era, and I understand that,” he said. Some may be sad to see the printed edition fall by the wayside, but for Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopedia Britannica, it’s essential for the company to move with the times. The news means that the final print version of the highly regarded general knowledge encyclopedia was the 32-volume set published in 2010. The world’s oldest English-language encyclopedia, first published in 1768 in Edinburgh, Scotland, will now concentrate purely on its online edition, as well as its educational tools. The Encyclopedia Britannica announced on Tuesday that after 244 years in print, it would no longer be producing physical copies of its multi-volume book set.
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