As publishers go, Huntington Press' Anthony Curtis is a heretic. His message: Print is dying — but it's still important. "Print is going to survive for a long time because there's a lot of people who just can't grasp the new technology," he notes, sitting in Huntington's new offices on Procyon Road. But, he adds, new media are taking the reading experience in a different direction. "The younger demographic, and even the thirties now who have come up and are understanding the 'Net, don't really want to be encumbered with the hard copy. They want to be grabbed and amazed online and they want it for free."

This ought not to be a cause for alarm at Huntington, whose Las Vegas Advisor, with its short articles and profusion of graphs, would be very online-friendly. However, the old-fashioned book is still Huntington's mainstay. "People aren't going to want to specifically sit and read a book online," Curtis insists, adding that the necessary technology is there. "The reason that print won't go away is that there are still too many old-timers. There are too many people in their forties, fifties, sixties who want nothing to do with the Internet, who want to hold things in their hands, who still want to turn pages."

Besides, there are certain places where online reading is a practical impossibility. As Curtis puts it, "You can't really lay at the pool, on a raft with your laptop ... it's not as easy as a paperback." But diminishing free time in American society is a problem. The hardcore readers, Curtis believes, will always be there, if not in the same numbers. "But if you're a borderline reader, you'll supplant that with other things."

While the Huntington boss believes there will always be a "guilty pleasure" market for the hard-cover book that can be carried around, he says newspapers are the ones truly in danger. Stephens Media, which publishes the Las Vegas Review-Journal, has actually been cutting back its online presence. But, according to Curtis, any newspaper publisher whose eyes aren't open to the new media represented by the Internet "is in danger, is a dinosaur, is extinct ... the Greenspuns are the best example in Las Vegas of a big media group that's embraced the newer forms. They also do paper, but seem to see the direction of the future," he adds.

In that battle for the reader's soul, Huntington is in a bit of tug-of-war with itself. Curtis is one of the stars of CBS' Ultimate Blackjack Tour, which also airs in syndication on WGN-TV. Now, the show is augmented by an online subscription service, Club UBT . "For $19.95 a month, you can literally play legally because it falls within sweepstakes law," Curtis contends. "The whole idea between Club UBT and the TV show was to get in on the Internet frenzy. Now all these people, they're afraid to do anything," because of the chilling effect of former Sen. Bill Frist's Unlawful Internet Gaming Act and a heavy Justice Department crackdown that followed.

Still, they can't be too afraid. Club UBT had 120 signups in the first hour it went 'live.' "These people who pay $19.95 to play unlimited tournaments, they can actually get paid cash and win things like iPods and mopeds. But they can [also] win seats on the TV show, which is what everyone wants," Curtis explains.

The UBT's success has also landed Huntington a "really, really juicy deal" to serve as content provider to All In Magazine, subscriptions to which come as part of the Club UBT package. Formerly an all-poker book, All In is moving to embrace '21,' hence Huntington's role. "That is the best decision we made at Huntington," Curtis maintains, and All In's readers may soon be able to read a faux, online version, complete with the sound of turning pages. Designed with Virtual Paper, it's currently in demo form but Curtis is already thinking about further synergies.

Yet this comes at the same time that Huntington is hitting the market with three ink-and-paper books: Culotta by Dennis Griffin, set for a July 16 release; Beneath the Neon by CityLife News Editor Matt O'Brien, which dropped last month, and — perhaps most anticipated of all — Steve Friess' Gay Vegas, a probable autumn release.

While Huntington has achieved eminence among Vegas-based publishers by dominating the gambling-oriented niche, when it has moved away from that central mission it has struggled. Which meant rejiggering old strategies, to the point where Curtis thinks Huntington is finally seeing the returns for which it's long hoped.

This has been achieved, in his opinion, by "targeting other, crisper topics" outside Huntington's core 35-40 gambling titles. The Mob memoir Culotta is, he says, "the perfect example," one for which he turned down five to 10 other manuscripts. "Culotta's doing shoot-em-up business right now, especially because we're marketing it like mad in Chicago. They've got their Operation Family Secrets trial going on, trying to root out what's left of the old Mob influence there. This plays right into it."

It also got Curtis subpoenaed by both the FBI and the defense counsel for Joey "The Clown" Lombardo. "I could potentially go to jail [if Huntington withheld the manuscript], but it was never close to that. Had it, I'd have folded like a chaise lounge," Curtis laughs. "We're blowing it up into something: 'The book that was subpoenaed by the FBI.' But it was really less of an event than it sounds."

While readers might flock to Culotta, Curtis expects book critics to descend upon Beneath the Neon, O'Brien's first-person exploration of the tunnels criss-crossing Sin City. Says Curtis, "the book-review industry tends to be a bit ... snooty" and unlikely to take note of, say, the latest blackjack tome. "Beneath the Neon, on the other hand, was snapped up and reviewed by Publishers Weekly and by Kirkus and by many, many other media-review sources," including Peabody, which also reviewed Culotta, after ignoring Huntington titles for a decade.

As for Gay Vegas, Curtis thinks that, with Friess' high profile and the disposable income enjoyed by gay Americans, he may have an 'evergreen' on his hands and is already thinking about an update for 2009. And what's the gayest place in town? Wynn Las Vegas, he says, although he credits his girlfriend with the insight.

He flashes back to a dinner at Bartolotta: "She said, 'There are a lot of gay couples in here.' I said, 'Why do you think that is?' She goes, 'Because the way the place is designed, the look of it, with all the wild colors and everything else, is attractive to the gay community. This is a gay hotel.' Later, when the book came out, [Friess] essentially says probably the gayest or most gay-accomodating or gay-friendly, pleasing-to-gay hotels is Wynn."

Those Las Vegans long inured to "Crazy Girls" billboards and unsubtle promotions of that ilk may have adopted the notion that Sin City is pitched to a heterosexual crowd and a pretty debauched one, at that. Curtis emphatically disagrees, saying it's the place for equal opportunity debauchery. "If they could get away with it," he adds, "they'd do a commercial with a guy and his dog." Shhhhhh! Let's let Billy Vassiliadis come up with one on his own.