Papers Fight Over Whether Third Oxford English Dictionary Will Ever Be Printed
PublishersLunch

The original story in the Sunday Times this weekend was interesting, and reasonable enough. Oxford University Press ceo Nigel Portwood noted "the print dictionary market is just disappearing, it is falling away by tens of per cent a year." Asked if the company would issue a print version of the third edition of the OED--said to be 28 percent complete, and estimated to be at least 10 years away from being finished and likely longer--Portwood made the mistake of being candid and stating the obvious: "I don't think so."

Thus a wave of the-OED-is-dead stories was unleashed. (The last printed version was issued in 1989, comprising 20 volumes.) Even though the first story contained a statement from an Oxford spokesperson saying that a print version had not been ruled "if there is sufficient demand at the time" a second wave of supposedly-rebuttal stories offers spokesperson Anna Baldwin stating more of the obvious: "No decision has yet been made on the format of the third edition."

The Telegraph
The Star

And at The Daily Beast:

Sad news for bibliophiles: Oxford University Press said on Sunday that the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, its 20-volume, authoritative guide to the English language, could be online-only. This is all a bit hypothetical, as the third edition is still at least a decade away, but the new chief executive of OUP told the Sunday Times, "The print dictionary market is just disappearing. It is falling away by tens of percent a year.” The OED has sold about 30,000 copies since the release of the second edition in 1989; meanwhile, it gets 2 million hits online a month from people who pay $295 for a yearly subscription.
Read it at Associated Press