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0 pointsbawolff9mo ago0 comments

Not just in the past. People write books today just as much as in the past.

Even today, encyclopedia briticana is still selling an encyclopedia product for about $75 a year.

The new business model is competiting with the old one. Generally the new model is winning on price and breadth, by a fairly wide margin. Accuracy seems about the same for both business models.

A business model doesn't need to be perfect to win, it just needs to be slightly better.

> It's how the vast majority of human knowledge has been stored and perpetuated for millennia.

I think writing books for money is a newish phenomenom. I think historically you probably had more of a patronage system for most art. Selling your written work is a lot harder in the pre-printing press era.

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ars9mo ago

> Generally the new model is winning on price and breadth, by a fairly wide margin. Accuracy seems about the same for both business models.

I quite disagree on both counts. Unless by breadth you mean tons of different topics. But if you want info on a specific topic a book has far greater breadth than the new systems.

Accuracy is also hit or miss, it depends on the topic. Highly charged topics are rarely accurate - at least with a book the bias is known and you can pick multiple books, online articles are a popularity contest/majority rules, rather than actual accuracy.

Technical topics are pretty accurate, but often pretty shallow. Or worse: Great technical detail that is impossible to understand unless you already know the topic, in which case why do you need it?

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