A former dot-com dealmaker is now dealing a new hand in publishing.
All In, a bimonthly
magazine about the world of Texas Holdem poker, will be launched next
month by Bhu Srinivasan.
A 28-year-old former
director of business development with InfoSpace.com, Srinivasan once
hungered to take over the online mag Salon.com.
After publishing two
test issues of All In from Seattle, the editor and publisher moved the
mag to Manhattan and lined up Time Warner to distribute the premiere to
Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble and other big outlets.
"We expect to be the
fastest-growing magazine in 2005," he told the Daily News yesterday,
saying he'll guarantee advertisers a circulation of 150,000 by February.
"We believe we'll
reach more than 500,000 copies next year, in terms of acquiring new
subscriptions," he added.
Srinivasan is
counting on the surge in poker-playing shows on TV, starting with the
Bravo channel's "Celebrity Poker Showdown," to help boost interest in
his mag.
Indeed, "Celebrity
Poker" co-host Phil Gordon writes for All In, whose premiere will
feature his account of a poker game with quarterback Tom Brady and other
New England Patriots. The issue will also carry a 25-page instructional
section.
Ben Affleck, who won
the California State
Texas Holdem
Poker
Championship last summer - a $350,000 prize - was on the cover of the
second test issue.
Poker champs Howard
Lederer and Chris (Jesus) Ferguson also contribute to the mag.
Srinivasan has
talked big before. In 1999, he went from high-flying InfoSpace, which
provided infrastructure support to hundreds of Web sites (and enabled
him to drive a Jaguar and a BMW), to found and obtain funding for
something called ThinkView Inc.
It equipped a bunch
of newspapers, magazines and broadcasters to syndicate their content
across the Internet before folding in 2001.
That's when
Srinivasan boasted about wanting to buy financially challenged Salon.com,
ax most of its staff and use the Web site as an ad magnet for showcasing
stories from The New Yorker, The Economist and other titles.
Now, as he plans
other launches after All In, he said, "I just love the magazine
business."
His Web site can be
found at allinmagazine.com.
