The publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica are to stop selling printed volumes of the books in public.

They say the move is necessary because an increasing number of people are buying encyclopaedias for their computers, stored on compact discs with read-only memory.

The CD-Rom costs only one-tenth of the printed version

These are around a tenth the price of a full set of encyclopaedias.

The company stopped making presentations in people's homes in 1997, and has not sold the encyclopaedia door-to-door for 30 years.

But direct sales in shopping centres, railway stations and airports have always been an important feature of the company's marketing.

From April it will be laying off 70 independent sales staff in the UK and Ireland.

Tim Pethick, vice president and general manager of Britannica's English language products, said: "This has been a painful decision.

"But Britannica has to respond to fundamental changes in consumer-buying patterns.

"In-home selling served us very well for many years, but today our customers want to buy in other ways.

"The revenues generated from our in-homes sales efforts no longer justify the costs."

Britannica estimates that next year CD-Rom will account for 85% of total sales and, in common with many publishers and broadcasters, the firm plans to develop a pay-per-view online service on the Internet.
 

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