Steven Brill, the self-appointed watchdog of journalism, wants to sell you the latest John Grisham novel, a subscription to the New Yorker and - since he's got your attention - the 164-page doctoral dissertation "An Experimental Study to Determine the Effect of Warming-Up on Golf Performance." (A hard copy goes for $69.50.)
"What's the market for dissertations?" Brill asks while chomping on an unlit cigar in his midtown Manhattan office. "Maybe nothing. But the point is, we're not buying anything until we sell it."
Welcome to Contentville.com, a new business that Brill - founder of American Lawyer magazine, Court TV and Brill's Content media magazine - calls a "second-generation e-commerce venture." Launching this week, Contentville is backed by $120 million from some of the very media companies - CBS (dossier), NBC and Primedia - that his magazine monitors.
The company will draw on the writing talents and opinions of National Public Radio (dossier) commentator Daniel Pinkwater, Brandeis University law professor Anita Hill and author George Plimpton, among others. It will cater to information junkies, selling books, magazines, speeches and "more than 1 million doctoral dissertations from over 1,000 universities."
It's an ambitious plan. For one thing, Brill has to persuade people to come to Contentville to pay for "content" - everything from a magazine article on golf swings to an old New York Times piece on genetics - even if it's already available online for free. And in selling books online, he's entering a market that is very competitive.
Contentville is a clearinghouse; there will be no inventory. Books and magazines will be shipped directly from distribution partner Ingram, the book wholesaler and magazine distributor; e-books from Gemstar and Microsoft (MSFT); research materials from Bell & Howell (BHW); and rare books from Alibris. It will charge customers for content downloads like magazine articles and speeches. "The whole ethic of this place," says Brill, "is we're going to give people the honest deal."
Brill is not afraid to say that he thinks many well-known Internet businesses are "bullshit." He freely questions the viability of companies like the Web zine Nerve and delivery service Kozmo.com (dossier); he has doubts, too, about Amazon.com (AMZN).
"We're going to do something different," he says. "We'll take our time. We're going to run on a five-year business plan. And we're going to raise all the money upfront, like I did with Court TV. And we may go profitable beforehand. And we may go public."
Brill has attracted some big-time backers. Aside from CBS, NBC and Primedia, investors include Microsoft; TheStreet.com (TSCM) founder James Cramer; magazine subscription service Ebsco; and Ingram, which also handles shipping for Buy.com and Barnesandnoble.com. Brill's company, Brill's Media Holdings, owns a 34 percent stake.
He has plans for the cash: Contentville intends to spend $75 million on advertising through the end of 2002. Even so, Brill figures it has enough money "to last the next two years and then some."
While Brill has deep pockets, he also has competition. One new rival, Booksense.com, is scheduled to launch a few days after Contentville. That site, sponsored by the American Booksellers Association (dossier), will give independent bookstores a way to sell to customers around the clock. Contentville also has relationships with independent booksellers - but Avin Mark Domnitz, CEO of the ABA, sees Contentville's alliances as little threat.
"What an independent bookstore is, is people. It's a physical location," says Domnitz. "Now, should it have an online location so that it can be au courant in this world of e-commerce? Yes. Should it be only that? Never."
