After 244 years in print, the gold-embossed, leather-bound, 32-volume Encyclopedia Britannica is going completely digital. The Britannica company, headquartered in Chicago and with about a dozen offices around the world, announced this week it’s abandoning its traditional hardcover product.
This is no surprise to the millions who access Wikipedia multiple times a day – but at least one person attached to the print version of Britannica says he’s “heartbroken.”
About 10 years ago, author A.J. Jacobs began reading the entire Britannica partly as a stunt, partly as a career move (he wrote a book about it later, which made The New York Times bestseller list). Flipping through its tissue-thin pages and squinting at its 9-point font with the books propped in his lap, Jacobs read all 44 million words over the course of a year while his wife, friends and family poked fun. He wanted to “smarten up,” he says, because he worried that at age 35 his brain was starting to “turn to tapioca.”
Among other things, he learned about a-ak – ancient East Asian music (the first entry in the encyclopedia) – and Zywiec, the Polish city, population 32,000, known primarily for its beer (the last entry in the encyclopedia).
“Stunts can have their own absurd nobility,” Jacobs noted on Wednesday, adding that George Bernard Shaw, heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, and C.S. Forester were also “members of the start-to-finish club.” (Forester actually read it twice.) Either way, if Jacobs started his project now, he’d have to suck it up and read the whole sprawling thing online – or shell out $29.95 for the deluxe DVD (and hope that reading experience would be satisfactory).
Here are a few more numbers associated with the iconic encyclopedia.
4 pounds
weight of each volume
4,000
number of hardcover copies still for sale now, from the final print run in 2010
$1,395
price Jacobs paid for the hardcover set 10 years ago
$1,395
price of the hardcover set now
$1,999
price of the Spanish-language version
$3,400
price of the French-language version
$1.99
cost of monthly subscription to all Britannica content for iPad, iPhone or iPod touch
65,000-plus
number of articles in the encyclopedia
33,000
number of pages
24,000
number of images
4,000
number of expert contributors (Nobel laureates, historians, professors, etc.)
4 feet 6 inches
height of the encyclopedia if all 32 volumes are stacked one on top of the other
100 million-plus
number of “knowledge seekers” who currently access the Britannica’s website, educational sites and apps
2,300
number of workers employed by Britannica in its peak hardcover years
400
number of current employees (about 300 in Chicago and the rest worldwide)
0
number of employees laid off due to the digital-only transition
1768
year the Britannica was first printed, in Edinburgh (which is why it's actually retained the British spelling of encyclopedia)
1901
year it moved its headquarters and print operations to U.S.
1961
year it issued its 16-volume children's version
1996
year the company laid off its remaining sales force in U.S. and Canada
18
number of years Britannica was managed by Sears Roebuck
4
number of parts in the Britannica since 1985: Micropaedia, Macropaedia, Propaedia, and 2-volume index
3
number of "visionary" Scotsmen who created the initial edition
$100,000-plus
annual salary of at least one door-to-door salesman during his best years
10
top words most often used in Britannica articles:
1. century
2. first
3. state(s)
4. new
5. world
6. city
7. time
8. war
9. American
10. work
$1
amount Jacobs' wife started fining him for every "irrelevant" Britannica-based fact he inserted into their conversations