Social Publisher Wattpad Closes First Round | paidContent

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Document-sharing and self-publishing site Wattpad has closed its first round of funding from private investors including Harvey Beck and Alan Levine, former co-CEOs of ICOM and Bert Amato, co-founder of Symantec-owned software firm Delrina. The specific amount wasn’t disclosed. In an e-mail message, Wattpad CEO Allen Lau says that the four-year-old company is close to sustaining the profitability it reached in Q409. The Toronto-based company plans to raise additional capital to support general growth efforts. Wattpad is trying to bill itself as “YouTube for ebooks + MySpace for writers.” In terms of establishing itself as an e-book community site, Wattpad is similar to companies like Scribd, which has also been working on developing its e-commerce offerings. It says it has a library of over 250,000 e-books created by its community, along with 5 million downloads. Release