3 ms·
> At a time when most information comes to us for free online (with strings attached, of course), it's easy to have sticker shock at the $1,199 retail price for
by acatton 3y ago
> At a time when most information comes to us for free online (with strings attached, of course), it's easy to have sticker shock at the $1,199 retail price for the 2023 edition of World Book, although shoppers might occasionally find it for as low as $799 on Amazon (to compare, the online subscription costs $250 per year)
I understand that there is some economy of scale issue. (I would expect them to have very few buyers) But this price is hard to justify. Does it cost $949 to print and ship, when comparing the online edition to the physical edition?
- cafard 3y agoMy guess is that the price is comparable (adjusted for inflation) to what my parents' generation paid for encyclopedias in the 1950s and 1960s.
- thesuitonym 3y agoI think it's actually less when adjusted for inflation. I recall full sets like this being close to $2000 even way back when. Of course, back then you'd often "subscribe" to them, paying a smaller monthly fee and getting one book per month until you had the full set.
- jasomill 3y agoUsed books were a thing even way back when; as a child in the mid-'80s, I bought (with my parents' money) a complete Encyclopædia Britannica set at the opening "friends and family" night of our local public library system's annual book sale for $100 or so, in "like new" condition and barely out of date.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoFunny to think that parents purchased an encyclopedia for the family the way a later generation would purchase a home computer for the family. Actually, maybe funny is the wrong word, it's kind of sweet.
- namdnay 3y agoHow many online encyclopedias are there? How many print encyclopedias are there? Price s aren’t (only) determined by costs
- Veen 3y agoThe final edition of Encyclopaedia Brittanica was $1,395.
- QuarterReptile 3y agoThat sounds so cheap to me. My 11th edition of Encyclopedia Brittanica cost maybe $4000, and I have to do maintenance to fight off dust mites and red rot. But it looks very good, and it's widely considered the best Encyclopedia. Apprently Wikipedia started out as a project to digitize 11th Britannica. It's public domain now, so you can read it on your phone free if you're interested in ruining all the charm.
- bigbillheck 3y ago> it's widely considered the best Encyclopedia I've been hearing this since the pre-web days. Most of the people saying it, as I remember, were either Jerry Pournelle or his fellow travelers, and even as a youth I had to wonder how much of that was just nostalgia for the peak of the British Empire and all that went along with it.
- mattcaywood 3y agoSome people might enjoy the pre-war colonial grandeur and optimism, but the 11th is mostly notable for the quality of its authors including: Ernest Rutherford, Bertrand Russell, T.H. Huxley, James Jeans, Peter Kropotkin Before or after 1911, this level of scholar would not typically be found writing encyclopedia entries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_Eleventh_Edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_E...
- eesmith 3y agoShannon wrote the entry on "Information Theory" for the 12th edition. https://archive.org/details/encyclopdiabrita12chic/page/n307/mode/2up?q=shannon https://archive.org/details/encyclopdiabrita12chic/page/n307...
- ancientworldnow 3y ago~$28-50 a book for a large hard bound full color print doesn't sound unreasonable?
- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago[dead]