Leanpub sells both ebooks and online courses.
Sometimes, a Leanpub course is created from a Leanpub book.
Related Article: What is Leanpub's CourseAI service?
That means you may sometimes find books and courses that appear to be very similar.
One example is Henrik's Kniberg's book Generative AI in a Nutshell, and its corresponding course, Generative AI in a Nutshell (The Course).
Here's what the landing page for the book looks like:
...and here's what the landing page for the course looks like:
(Another example is Obie Fernandez's book Patterns of Application Development Using AI, and the corresponding course, Patterns of Application Development Using AI (The Course).
So, what is the difference between the course and the book?
The ebook is as you would expect, an ebook!
Related Article: What formats do Leanpub ebooks come in?
What a "course" means online can be a lot of different things, though.
On Leanpub, the course is typically the material from the book, lightly edited, but in course format, including quizzes and exercises you can take, with a completion certificate if you pass the course.
So in terms of content, the course is typically 99% the same as the book.
However, the course allows you to get a certificate to show you read the content and understood it, by taking quizzes and exercises to keep you focused.
This can be especially useful if you are doing the course for work, or to get your professional development hours for the year completed, and your boss or your credentialing organization won't let you just read a book and say you did, but they will let you do a course and submit a certification of completion to them.
What does a course look like when I'm taking it?
When you start a course, you will see something like this:
There will be a main section with the course content:
There will be a menu on the left where you can read the lessons (these would typically correspond to the chapters in a book):
In the menu on the left you will also notice quizzes and exercises you can take:
Quizzes are graded, and exercises are just for practice, so they are not graded, and do not count towards passing the course.
Here is what a multiple-choice quiz looks like:
Why are courses more expensive than books?
Courses are more expensive than books in part because they are much more complex, and serve a different purpose.
Courses include not only the content from the book, but also all the work that goes into creating quizzes and exercises, and the platform required to record grades, issue certificates, etc.
A course is something you can take as part of a corporate or professional development training program.
So, if you want to read the content, buy the book! But if you need the challenge or the proof of what you've learned, buy the course!
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