It's too bad Encyclopaedia Britannica won't collaborate with Wikipedia. The company could bring their authors, reviewers, content, and experience from a sinking ship to an information platform that is successful but could be even better.
"About half a million households pay a $70 annual fee that includes access to the full database of articles, videos, original documents and access to mobile applications." That's $35 million a year, which is not as good as the best year of the print version (which would have $150 million in sales if I'm figuring correctly), but is still not too shabby.
Books don't need a cadre of software engineers pushing out updates for iOS + every Android device, video transcoding licenses, account servicing, servers, an 800-number staffed with tech support...
And who would pay for those authors, reviewers, content, and experience? Those Britannica contributors interested in contributing to Wikipedia can certainly do so--and I assume there are some who are. But I'm also sure that many contributed to Britannica because they were paid and, for better or worse, there's no model to monetizing Wikipedia contributions.
