News

Rightsworld, NetRead Team Up
Calvin Reid -- 10/9/00

Rightsworld.com, an online marketplace for selling rights, and NetRead, a firm providing an array of electronic marketing services to publishers, announced an alliance between the two firms to promote each other's online publishing tools.

Nick Bogaty, president of rightsworld.com, told PW that the two firms will begin integrating many of their products. He said that rightsworld.com, launched just prior to this year's BEA, currently has about 300 registered buyers and sellers. As part of the alliance, rightsworld will be listed as a service application on NetRead's JacketCaster, a Web-based service that allows publishers to transmit their catalogue information along with information about available rights. "NetRead's products save time and money for publishers," said Bogaty. "They have streamlined formerly cumbersome processes that publishers have been forced to do."

NetRead was cofounded in the spring of 1999 by Pete Alcorn, a former editor, computer-book ghost writer and packager. The company offers software applications that help publishers to market their books electronically. "We automate processes that are an IT headache for publishers," said Alcorn.

The firm is based in San Francisco, with 12 to 20 employees. The site received venture capital funding from Alan Meckler's Internet.com. NetRead offers a variety of directories, industry newsletters, publishing how-to information, a jobs directory and more. It also offers EventCaster, an automated listing of book promotional events. Users can input details about events and set guidelines for automatic transmission of that information.

Alcorn told PW that NetRead's revenues come from its JacketCaster application. The JacketCaster application is hosted by NetRead and subscribers can log on; upload covers, promotional materials and other book data; and easily send the material to online retailers and other vendors.

NetRead's biggest customers include large university presses like Cambridge University Press. "They have large backlists of hard-to-find books and sophisticated catalogue information. That's why they do so well online." Alcorn said.

Alcorn thinks NetRead is ideally positioned for an industry transformed by technology. "Publishing is changing. New books are coming out faster and old books are coming back into print. Soon books many never go out of print. Electronic marketing and automation will be critical. If you're a publisher. you've got to differentiate your books."