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Student entrepreneur secures Start-Up Loan for eBook business

A student entrepreneur from Middleton has been awarded the 300th North West fund from the Start-Up Loans scheme for his ebook subscription service, Huffier.

Andrew Cooper, 22, from Middleton had the idea to set up a digital reading library business similar to Netflix or Spotify, but for ebooks.

Huffier will allow access to an unlimited, on demand digital library on a computer, tablet or smartphone through a pay monthly subscription.

Subscribers will be able to see up to 2,000 pages for £5 each month, while members who pay a higher £10 fee will be able to access up to 8,000 pages a month.

Andrew commented: “Netflix is for films & TV series, Spotify is for music, and now Huffier is for eBooks.

“As a comparison, record labels license a selection of their tracks to Spotify and their subscribers pay a low monthly fee to listen to the tracks.

“In our case, book publishers will license a selection of their eBook titles to Huffier and our paying subscribers will read the titles through the free-to-download reading apps.

“With the growth of tablets and Kindles there is a huge appetite for reading and researching books online and I believe this is a real opportunity to bring eBooks to a much wider audience via smartphones and computers.”

Huffier won support from the £112m government Start-Up Loan programme, which is chaired by entrepreneur and former Dragons’ Den panellist, James Caan, after Andrew took time out of studying at the University of Salford to launch his business idea.

He now predicts there will be more than 35,000 monthly paying subscribers to Huffier and the business will turnover a projected £1.2m in its first year of trading.

Andrew added: “Huffier is a platform that benefits both book lovers and publishers and their authors.

“It gives readers access to an immense online library for a low monthly fee and publishers receive a royalty for every 10 pages read by a Huffier paying subscriber.

“As this type of service will scale quickly to a large amount of subscribers the royalties that the publishers receives will scale accordingly.”

Andrew said he has already formed relationships with publishers and has plans to expand his service to the U.S. and Asia to create academic subscription services for schools and colleges.

Natalie Tuer from Business Finance Solutions, which delivers Start-Up Loans in the North West, said: “From his very first pitch to us we could see that Andrew had something quite special with his concept of online book sharing.

“His understanding of the market, his vision and the passion he has to make this business big are all qualities that we’re sure will make him and Huffier a success.”

More than 2,000 loans have been delivered across the UK through the Start-Up Loan scheme, along with business mentoring and training support.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, commented on the programme’s success: “This clearly demonstrates the ambition and drive people in this country have to create a business and I am pleased that Start-Up Loans are helping more and more entrepreneurs who start small but think big transform their ideas into viable, growing businesses.

“I am on the side of people who want to work hard and get on in life, and it is by backing aspiration and the businesses of tomorrow, as well as the businesses of today, that we are equipping the UK to compete in the global race.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Miranda Dobson .