Unless they plan on making the electronic readers cheaper they're not going to be able to get rid of paper bound books. I currently live in a relatively poor area of the country and while I am fortunate enough to be able to buy books, I know many people who are solely dependent on the public and school libraries for books. There is simply no way that the people in this area would be able to buy a Kindle or iPad. What are the publishers going to do, subsidize electronic readers for everybody.
Dealing with the OED specifically the rate to subscribe for one year is $295USD, the price for the OED Print Version on Amazon is $995USD. Assuming that a person who bought the OED P.V. would take care of it and make it last for longer than four years they would actually come out ahead because the by the end of four years online subscribers would have paid $1180USD.
It looks like I've found another soapbox.
Anyways if anybody is interested in a good book about the beginnings of the OED there's one called T
he Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester. The U.S. title is
The Professor and the Madman.