> Encyclopedias did really well until Wikipedia came along. Encarta was the first sign of trouble, but Wikipedia was the nail in the coffin. This is incidental

> Encyclopedias did really well until Wikipedia came along. Encarta was the first sign of trouble, but Wikipedia was the nail in the coffin. This is incidental to your comment, but I think your details are wrong in this example. Multimedia digital encyclopedias replaced physical encyclopedias long before Wikipedia came along, in fact throughout the 80s and early 90s it is a pretty safe bet that encylopedias on CD-ROM and later DVD significantly outsold the dead-tree versions, and by the mid-90s the major brands (at least in the US) already had online versions as well. Encarta (which was initially a rebranded Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia) was just one example, and a later one at that, of many encyclopedias that were transitioning from print to digital. Encarta doesn't represent some kind of paradigm shift in the encyclopedia business, just a large company snatching up a small player in a market they were trying to penetrate. Interestingly enough, Encarta has ceased production, while World Book, Encyclopedia Britannica and others are still in business and presumably profitable (for now). Wikipedia was and continues to be a threat to "traditional" encyclpedias, but not because they didn't anticipate a transition from physical to digital publication.