Web Site Dispenses Books, Journals, Dissertations -- and Literary Advice

By GOLDIE BLUMENSTYK

A Web site that sells books, dissertations, legal documents, and other material with an intellectual bent marked its debut on the Internet this month.

The site, Contentville.com, also features literary advice columns from a panel of academic experts and leading figures in the arts, politics, and other fields.

Steven Brill, the founder of the site and also the chairman of Brill's Content, a magazine about journalism, said the site aims to be "the ultimate dream store for content."

Contentville.com will sell every book in print, through an arrangement with the Ingram Book Group, a wholesaler, but Mr. Brill said books themselves "are a relatively low priority for us."

The site, he said, will emphasize its ability to sell magazines, journal articles, transcripts, screenplays, historical documents, and scholarly research. Contentville.com has relationships with a number of companies to provide such material, including EBSCO and Primedia for magazine and journal subscriptions, Bell & Howell for dissertations, and Libris for rare books. It will also sell electronic books.

For published material, authors will be paid according to their publishers' policies; for unpublished material, such as speeches, Contentville will pay a royalty to the copyright holder. If the site sells a dissertation provided by Bell & Howell, for instance, the author will receive the same royalty that he or she would have received if it had been sold through any other Bell & Howell marketing channel.

Jim Barcelona, a lawyer at Bell & Howell, said Contentville.com might expand the market for dissertations, and that, in turn, might cause some authors to feel that their royalty agreements were not adequate for the changed market. But Mr. Barcelona said that consumer interest in dissertations is pretty low, and Contentville isn't likely to change that. "I'd be surprised and delighted" if it did, he added.

The site works a bit like a library catalog, allowing customers to search for resources on particular topics. For each of those subjects, Contentville provides an eclectic list of books, dissertations, historic speeches, and other relevant material, along with their prices.

For instance, when a user searches under "feminism," the site returns with, among others, these suggestions: under books, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own; under speeches, a 1900 talk about birth control by Margaret Sanger; and under dissertations, a 1994 Ph.D. thesis on birth mothers who search for the children they gave up for adoption.

For some users, though, the searches may seem more random than eclectic. For example, a less-directed "browse" search for "literary" topics returns with recommendations for Cry, the Beloved Country, The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy: Or Everything Your Doctor Won't Tell You, the Cliffs Notes to A Separate Peace, and a French-English dictionary.

Books typically sell for 25 percent below the suggested retail price, and magazines for the lowest available subscription price. Most individual articles and documents sell for a few dollars apiece, and are accompanied by a subscription pitch, when appropriate.

Publishers "expect this to generate lots of subscriptions," Mr. Brill said. All prices, he said, are set with publishers' approval.

Steve Cohn, the director of Duke University Press, said the site could be a mixed blessing for organizations like his. Because the site is to be marketed heavily, it could attract readers to journals that have potential for circulation growth. But if the site makes it very easy to obtain individual issues or articles, it could undermine subscriptions. "Why would a library want to subscribe if its customers, or the library itself, could instantly get the article," he said. "That's what we'd worry about."

Eventually, the site will also offer downloadable video clips, government documents, and newsletters. Contentville.com has approached The Chronicle to discuss a possible relationship.

The emphasis on electronic delivery, said Mr. Brill, is what sets Contentville apart from companies like Amazon.com that spend a lot of money warehousing and mailing out books. Contentville will make its money by marketing and selling the products of others, and, whenever possible, in electronic form.

Contentville.com features recommendations from a roster of contributing editors that includes Harold Bloom, Anita Hill, and Wendy Wasserstein.

The site also carries advice to readers from about two dozen academic experts. For example, for readers interested in bioarchaeology, the site lists several recommendations from Clark Spencer Larsen, a professor of archaeology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It also includes a spot where readers can electronically add Mr. Larsen's latest book to their "shopping cart," although the professor said he had agreed to participate because he believes that academics should take every opportunity to explain their field to the public, and not for the plug.

Although Contentville will be marketing to college campuses, Mr. Brill said he doesn't consider it a threat to college bookstores, because of its emphasis on nonbook materials. The site is backed by CBS, which traded $40-million in advertising and promotional space for a 35-percent stake in the venture, along with NBC, Ingram, EBSCO, and other partners.

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