That doesn't really explain an 1800€ price tag. I've bought 500-100 page encyclopedias of academic subjects for $40 or $50.
Projects like this are built on the work of academics, the majority of whom are publicly funded. By and large they resent the for-profit publishers who benefit from their work and sometimes reduce them to needing to pirate their own work.
This book is like 7 volumes and 4600 pages on very niche subject matter. It's high but if you need it, you need it. I'm guessing most academics can look up individual papers as needed and don't need a comprehensive summary like this, as nice as that may be.