The Encyclopaedia Britannica will stop publishing its 32- volume printed edition after 244 years and instead focus on its digital efforts, a watershed moment that highlights the changing fortunes of content producers in the internet era.

A popular reference book occupying shelves of libraries and institutions worldwide will meet its end soon, while only the digital versions of Encyclopaedia Britannica would be available once the existing print editions would be sold out. The print editions will continue being sold till the current stock of 4,000 sets are sold out.

The emergence of the dot com age has decimated sales of Britannica. The reference book which sold around 1,20,000 volumes in 1990 has till couple of years back only sold 8,500 volumes.

Encyclopaedia Britannica the company has moved away from reference books to educational software and CDs. Educational software now accounts to 85 per cent of their sales revenues and 15 per cent comes from print and online sales of encyclopaedia content.