‘Read Petite’ Set For Launch

A big marketing campaign will launch new digital short story and journalism venture Read Petite to consumers, led by Waterstones founder founder Tim Waterstone.

The financing of the start-up company is currently being negotiated, but was said to be “substantial” and contain a sizeable marketing budget.

Authors will have the opportunity to host their own pages on the site, which will charge users a subscription fee to read short stories and serials from published authors through a browser on any device. Authors can upload their own material onto the site, as can publishers and agents – but the benchmark is all authors have to have been previously published.

Agent Peter Cox and consultant Martyn Daniels are joint managing directors and former Bookseller editor Neil Denny has joined in the role of chief operating officer. Waterstone is the non-executive chairman.

Cox said: “We are going to spend a lot of money on marketing; we think we are pushing at an open door.” He added that Read Petite was “a company for people who like reading first and foremost – if the technology gets in the way, then it is not doing its job.”

Waterstone said he became involved in Read Petite through an approach from Denny, after toying with getting into digital bookselling. He said: “I had been wondering how I should get into digital and if I should. But with this plan, the epiphany for me was that it is going to be a subscription website. With the success of Spotify – that really appealed to me.”