Zola Books, a New York-based independent e-book retailer, closed a $5.1m seed round.
The round, which added $3.9m to $1.2m previously announced, includes a variety of authors and individual investors led by Charles Dolan, founder of Cablevision and HBO.
Other backers included:
– Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram),
– The RZA (The Tao of Wu),
– Martin Clark (The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living)
– Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler’s Wife),
– Chandler Burr (The Emperor of Scent),
– Josh Bazell (Beat the Reaper).
– Bob Kohn, founder of eMusic,
– Jeff Pulver, an early investor in Twitter and FourSquare,
– David Placek, founder of Lexicon Branding,
– Paul Saltzman (Prom Night in Mississippi),
– Peter Sundman, former chairman and CEO Neuberger Berman Equity Funds, and
– Radcliff Group, a fund that invests in early-stage startups.
The company intends to use the funds to grow its engineering and strategic partnership initiatives.
Zola Books offers books from major publishers plus new and backlist e-book titles not available elsewhere. Its titles include five works from Joan Didion, five from John Gregory Dunne, Big Fish by Daniel Wallace, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, The New Hunger by Isaac Marion, and The Accidental Victim by James Reston Jr. The e-books are available via the company’s Zola Books iPhone/iPad app.
FinSMEs
04/11/2013