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Comment by acatton | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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That 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.

> 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.

Some 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_E...

Shannon wrote the entry on "Information Theory" for the 12th edition.

https://archive.org/details/encyclopdiabrita12chic/page/n307...

My guess is that the price is comparable (adjusted for inflation) to what my parents' generation paid for encyclopedias in the 1950s and 1960s.

I 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.

Used 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.

Funny 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.

~$28-50 a book for a large hard bound full color print doesn't sound unreasonable?

The final edition of Encyclopaedia Brittanica was $1,395.

How many online encyclopedias are there? How many print encyclopedias are there? Price s aren’t (only) determined by costs

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