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End of Era for Encyclopaedia Britannica
In 1768, a Scottish engraver named Andrew Bell and a printer named Colin Macfarquhar set ink to paper to create three cross-referenced volumes known as Encyclopaedia Britannica.
On Tuesday, Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. said it would stop printing its namesake books, a sign of how readers in recent years have abandoned printed reference volumes for websites such as Wikipedia and Google.
The Chicago publisher said it would instead focus on selling its reference works to subscribers through its website and apps for tablets or smartphones.
"This is not a sad day at Britannica," said Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "We are a fully digital company."
Britannica, whose contributors over the years have included Marie Curie, Albert Einstein and Henry Ford, said its print sales peaked in 1990, when it sold 120,000 printed sets. It has since seen a precipitous decline: In 2010, it printed a mere 12,000 sets and still has 3,500 left unsold. Each 32-volume set of Encyclopaedia Britannica costs about $1,500.
The idea of stopping print production of the venerable books had been in the works for a couple of years now, the company said, as it has become primarily an online product over the last twenty years.
Until 2004, the company was losing money as a result of its declining print sales. But since then, it has grown in the educational market, where the company now makes 85% of its revenue through sales of instructional programs and electronic books in math, science and the humanities for the K-12 curriculum and beyond.
Only 15% of Britannica’s revenue rolls in from reference-related content. The closely held company wouldn’t disclose its total profit figures, but said that it has been profitable for the past eight years and makes "millions of dollars" a year. Only about 1% of its revenue comes from selling printed sets of encyclopedias.
But the company still has a long way to go before it can touch the online presence of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia supported by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia appears as the No. 1 result in Google for 56% of searches, according to a 2012 study by Intelligent Positioning Ltd., a U.K.-based agency that helps businesses increase their online traffic.
Moreover, Encyclopaedia Britannica’s database is significantly smaller than that of Wikipedia’s, Mr. Cauz said. Between 1.2 and 1.5 billion search engine queries per month ask for content available in Encyclopaedia Britannica’s online pages, but less than 0.5% of those searchers end up on Britannica’s sites, he said. Nevertheless, Mr. Cauz says he is optimistic because the company has maintained profitability despite its low-ranking search results on Google.
"We are putting more free content out there so that we can attract the casual knowledge seeker," he said.
The company has already taken other pages out of Wikipedia’s book. Britannica Online allows readers to make revisions to the encyclopedia articles, which are then published by editors after a review process.
Wikipedia couldn’t be reached for comment late Tuesday.
Half a million households subscribe for full access to Encyclopaedia Britannica, and more than 100 million people have access to Britannica in schools, libraries and colleges, Britannica said.
Some weren’t surprised by the company’s decision to shutter its print set publishing. "It says that the state of storing and sharing knowledge is changing significantly, and with it, the role of the printed artifact," said Ethan Lipton, a professor in the technology department at California State University, Los Angeles. "You would expect an Encyclopaedia to migrate to digital, which gives you easy access and the ability to update quickly. Also, you don’t have to kill a lot of trees." Professor Lipton compared the end of the printed Encyclopaedia to the evolution of telephones, noting that years ago nobody would have given up their land lines. "A digital Encyclopaedia means more access, and without having to cart around all those volumes of books," he added.
Moreover, libraries won’t suffer, said Lorraine Shanley, president of industry consultants Market Partners International Inc. "Everybody is happier and more comfortable moving into a digital access model."
Joseph Esposito, a former chief executive of Encyclopaedia Britannica, noted that his house is packed with reference books.
"We’re moving and trying to decide whether to take them. Maybe they’ll become collectors’ items," he said.
But not all of Britannica’s print business will end. The company will continue to publish children’s books in India, though it plans to go digital there too in the future.
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