Oxford to Phase Out Print OED?

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.