E-Books Produced by Purdue University Press

In January of this year, Purdue University Press launched an e-book monograph imprint, Digital-I books [formerly http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/digital.htm]. The model was set up to help in those areas of scholarly publishing in which traditional print runs would be small, 200 or under. Coupled with the imprint was the opportunity to have a traditional book printed in paperback at very small quantities, 50 or less when needed to fill orders. We put out our first title in the imprint, Italian/American Short Films and Music Videos: A Semiotic Reading by Professor Anthony Julian Tamburri, Florida Atlantic University. As part of the contract provisions, we provided the author a PDA on which he could display his book to those he met at conferences and his university.

We are currently in the process of creating a series of ebooks in the field of comparative culture under the editorship of Steven Totosy who is the editor of the online journal CLCweb. We have also had discussions with the editor of Studies in Romance Literature about this model.

When I read about the trials an author has in publishing a limited-interest monograph (Marshall Poe), I am struck by the lack of interest by my fellow university presses. Still, I also understand that tenure decisions are not made in bytes yet. While Purdue University Press is small, other UPs have a lot invested in the traditional book-production process, and even when we offer the e-alternative to authors, they balk. However, the e-book will actually be a help propagate scholarship in areas that might never see the light of print.