In 2001 Oxford University Press published the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English at the fairly decent price of less than £ 20.00. After more than a decade a second edition has become available, which is now sold by Routledge. The hardback edition costs £ 180.00 - a price that really puts me off. There's no paperback edition available, just an e-book at almost £ 36.00 to be consulted either online or offline. Offering dictionaries online seems to be an increasing trend - like it or not.
The price probably means they only expect libraries to buy it, and only some at that.
ReplyDeleteWe can only guess what the move tells us about the publishers and compilers. You can never be sure who owns who these days, but OUP does not appear to have any interest in Routledge, who belong to Taylor&Francis. I was put off from the start by the compilers' novel attitude towards phonetic script and transcription.