Publishing platform Myebook is cash ready

A DIGITAL start-up that has created an easy way  to publish media rich content online for free,  is seeking investment of £2.5m investment as it prepares to launch its revenue model.

Oldham-based Myebook has spend the last two years and “several hundred thousand pounds” developing and testing the free to use publishing platform, which its owner says is now ready for the additional stages of development  that will generate an income for the innovative business model.

The platform can be used to publish a wide variety of documents with turn-page technology and embedded video, audio, data capture, text and links.

Uses include books to research documents and white papers to corporate brochures, newsletters and prospecti. Salford Business School is one organisation that is already using the technology to showcase its prospectus online.

Founder Sy Whitehall said:  “We wanted to make the platform free and to let people use our system, as by using it they are virally marketing the product.

“The platform’s drag and drop system allows you to publish and share content online, without needingto know how it all works.

“Plenty of people do PDF conversion software but noone has created a system to bring all the content online and enable it to be recompiled for different audiences.”

Myebook has 35,000 registered users across the world and the front end of the website receives around 250,000 visits a month. The plan is to hit 30 million users and be profitable by mid-2012.

Development of the company so far has been funded by private investment from sy whitehall myebookMr Whitehall and another company director but it is now looking for its first round of private equity investment of up to £2.5m.

Mr Whitehall said: “We have invested several hundres thousands to date, but that’s not on the books – it’s written oiff and  the copany has zero debt.

 “We’d use the investment to speed up development of the other platforms and to start e-commerce, as well as investing in staff and marketing.”

The first commercial development will be an e-commerce channel that will allow the author of a book or publication to release a certain number of pages  for free, before   asking them to pay to read the whole document online or to buy a hard copy.

The e-commerce function  will link to  a print on demand service and customer stock and distribution system, serviced by an outside provider. MyEbook would take a flat 10% charge for each sale.

Myebook is also introducting partner or Pro User accounts for  businesses and organisations that will also allow for off-line viewing, from £20 a month.

“This was in response to creative agencies that wanted  completely white label site for their clients,” said Mr Whitehall.

“It will have more functions and be whitelabeled, with that partner’s logo on the site. To the end user it will look as though they have launched the e-viewer from the partner website, although technically they will be on our website.” 

Another soon to be launched revenue channel is Myebook Learning, aimed at local eduction authorities, schools, colleges and universities.

This version of the product would be sold to schools under a license for £100 a month per account and has had its messaging modules turned off , so each user is working ina  protected ‘walled garden’ environment.

Teachers would register their students to see content for individual lesons, or even a year’s worth of exams and course work.

“You could have 100 or even 1,000 students using one account, it doesn’t matter.
 “Documents could include questions that time out in the ebook, which would then be self marking,” said Mr Whitehall.

“That content published by the schools could then be licensed and sold by them via th site – and we’d take 10% on that.”

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