32 volumes x ~$45 a piece. Seems to make sense. They're hard cover and very beautiful, can be used as a decorative piece as well.

The cost of a 2 million dollar yacht may also be justified, but that still explains why not more than a few thousand are sold a year.

Low sales isn't interesting in itself -- the Golden Ring of retail is a low volume/immense markup business. 244 years of history should also hint at the fact that pricing isn't the issue.

No, it simply hints that pricing wasn't always an issue, not that it isn't an issue.

The quick way to find out is - if they could make a good profit selling the entire set for $x where $x < $current, would they still be doing it? The answer is yes.

The reason the price used to work and doesn't now is that digital equivilents are not only (subjectively) better/easier/etc. - they're also cheaper.

I wonder if selling the most popular Wikipedia articles in printed form for around $100 would have a market.

It's already being done. I stumble across books like that in Amazon from time to time. The reviews usually give it away.

Search for wikipedia on amazon, and restrict the search to paperback books, and click past the first page or two, and you get an endless stream of books composed of Wikipedia entries.