Another of the major online rights trading organizations established within the past three years, rightsworld.com , is closing down, blaming "extremely difficult market conditions."
CEO Eric Miller and president Nick Bogaty said in a brief statement that the site would be closed as of this month--and in fact it has disappeared from the Web, apart from its closing announcement. "For those customers who are current members, we regret any inconvenience," they said. "Your account will not be billed. We hope that you enjoyed and found our service useful."
Rightscenter.com, subrights.com and rightsworld.com were all launched in early 1999, when the concept of online rights trading seemed very much the idea of the future, eliminating paperwork and costly postage. Despite the increasing use of e-mail, however, agents, editors and rights people worldwide seemed to prefer face-to-face meetings or direct correspondence and phone calls to making deals electronically. Subrights.com threw in the towel a year ago, and now only rightscenter.com is still in business, though on a much smaller scale than in its free-spending heyday.
Rightscenter.com, which has been undergoing management changes and is now led by cofounder Jim McHugh as CEO, announced it would unveil an updated and improved version of its Enterprise software at the Frankfurt Book Fair. It also said it had recently signed Scholastic to a one-year contract based on the new software's capabilities. It further announced a partnership agreement with R.R. Bowker Co. that allows publishers to create sales catalogues via rightscenter's technology and then distribute them to bookstores by way of Bowker's booksinprint.com and related online sites.
