0.22 Rotunda: a university press starts a digital imprint  (Page 12/15)

Until June 2010 Rotunda will be operating under a Mellon grant that covers the cost of several salaries. Threepositions are shared with the books program of the Press: Manager, Electronic Marketing Manager, and Systems Administrator. We alsohave three full-time Rotunda staff members: Editorial and Technical Manager, Programmer, and Project Editor. At timesRotunda has had a second programmer and a second project editor. The core staffhandles all the developmental work on new projects, including arranging copyediting and design, providing detailed specificationsto vendors, checking vendor work, working with the academic editors, programming new works and collections of works, refining thenavigation of the site, developing marketing materials, attending conferences to promote Rotunda or to give papers and demonstrations,soliciting reviews, selling licenses to librarians, and answering questions from libraries and other customers. I have handled the acquisition of new projects including arranging peer review, presenting projects to the Press's faculty board, and negotiating contracts with authors and rights holders.

As we develop a larger list of publications, we find that considerable time must be allowed for adding new material or enhancements to existing projects. One of the great differences between publishing in print and publishing online is that the print form is fixed at the time of publication, at least until a new edition can be contemplated. The digital edition by contrast seems to invite perpetual refinement—additions, corrections, new links, even a total redesign. David Sewell, Editorial and Technical Manager of Rotunda, wrote a fine paper on this subject, “It’s For Sale, So It Must Be Finished: Digital Projects in the Scholarly Publishing World.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 3:2 (spring 2009 Special Cluster: “Done”) (External Link)

From the beginning of Rotunda’s existence, we expected that its path to sustainability would be through sales of its publications, the only model that publishers find familiar. We were encouraged by the success of the Humanities E-Book project of the American Council of Learned Societies which began as a Mellon-funded program in 1999 and became self-sustaining from sales by 2005. Rotunda began to earn some sales income in 2004 with publication of The Dolley Madison Digital Edition. As we added more and larger publications and increased the number of customers, income has grown significantly. License income now pays a substantial part of Rotunda’s operating costs as well as underwriting development costs of new publications.

We now think it likely that Rotunda’s future revenue will come from several sources. Some will come from the licensed publications. Some will come from services provided by Rotunda’s consulting arm, Oculus. Some may come from grant support for specific projects. And some may come from contract work for the government to support Rotunda’s work in making the Founding Fathers’ Papers free to the public.