CompuServe Messages

Tim, There are between 3,000,000 and 5,000,000 (take Rich Bower's figures, or mine) already in the market. If you will kindly review Mr. Richard Day's insightful clipping from a Canadian newspaper (quoting an English paper), in his message #36281 of Jan 8, 1993, the article and Mr. Day said: QUOTE But, what caught my eye was this: "…at almost $1000 the automated OED is a third the price of the old-fashioned paper thing. Instead of being on 20,000 pages – that is 66 kilograms of tree – it is on two disks. CDs cost about $1 each to manufacture and since June Oxford University Press has sold 137 of the 20-volume OED and 1,000 CD-ROMS." What? Just 1,000 CD-ROMs in a half-year-and-a-bit? That's BIG sales? The article also mentions the people who are buying the CD-ROMs are "mostly people with institutional budgets." END QUOTE Even using Rich's figures, OUP has "captured" .00033 of the market! If you had the time to listen, I could list a substantial number of titles on CD-ROM that, in my opinion, aren't worth the matches it would take to melt them, that are selling in the 30,000 and higher range. If OUP is a business venture as so many of our friends have pointed out, they aren't exactly setting records. But then, I presume that the objective of business is to make money–maybe I'm wrong here too? Best regards Jan