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I'd like to become a Leanpub author. What should I do? What do I need to know?
I'd like to become a Leanpub author. What should I do? What do I need to know?

Keywords: indie publishing, self-publishing, books, authors, writing

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Written by Leanpub Support
Updated over a week ago
I'd like to become a Leanpub author. What should I do? What do I need to know?

Great! You can become a Leanpub author any time by creating a new book here or a new online course here.

Probably the most important thing to know about Leanpub is that we pay an 80% royalty rate on every sale, which is higher than most other self-publishing platforms.

We actually show your potential readers how much money the author earns right on the purchase page for your book; how many other self-publishing platforms do that?

If you're an indie author and you've already got your ebook files, you can upload your book to Leanpub and start earning 80% royalties on every sale in just a few minutes!

Finally, Leanpub has a number of amazing writing modes that let you use Leanpub to publish your book as you write it, chapter by chapter, so you can start building an audience and earning income, even before your book is finished!

Below are some resources that we have created to help you get started on your journey as a Leanpub author. You might want to bookmark this page in your browser for future reference!


Quick Walkthroughs for Getting Started on a Leanpub Book

After you create a book in any of our writing modes, you will be taken to a Getting Started page where you will be shown the correct walkthrough, but just for convenience, here's an article with all the walkthroughs in one place:

Using Leanpub to Create Print-Ready PDF Files for Print-On-Demand Services

Here is a walkthrough for Leanpub's Print-Ready PDF export workflow.

Tips for Self-Publishing and Selling Books Using Leanpub

There are tons of self-publishing platforms and services out there. Here's an article that sets out some of the things you can do with Leanpub to help grow your audience and drive sales, that you can't necessarily do on other platforms:

What are the features in the Standard and Pro author plans?

Leanpub has a "freemium" model, which means you can use our platform to write and self-publish books and courses for free. But it also means that we offer paid plans, with powerful extra features:

The Markua Manual

If you're writing a novel, you won't need to learn anything more than what we show you in the Getting Started walkthrough for the writing mode you select.

But if you want to do some more complicated formatting, or if you're writing a programming book, you'll find important guidance and examples of what to do in our Markua Manual:

https://leanpub.com/markua/read

How and when do you pay royalties?

Leanpub pays authors an 80% royalty rate on every sale, which is very high in the world of self-publishing platforms. We pay royalties via Wise or PayPal. Here is some information about how and when we pay author royalties:

How do I get feedback from readers?

One of the  really important features of the Lean Publishing process is that we encourage authors to publish early and often, and to engage with readers throughout the process of writing your book.

Here is some advice for how to engage with your readers:

Leanpub Author Support Guidelines

Leanpub is not perfect, but one of the reasons it is as robust as it is, is that we have interacted closely with thousands of authors over the years, as we have built the platform and extended its reach.

Over the course of the years, we have learned a few lessons about how to help authors get answer to their questions, and get their issues resolved, as quickly and easily as possible. Here are our Author Support Guidelines:

An Introduction to Lean Publishing

Here's a fun talk by Leanpub co-founder Peter Armstrong on the topic of Lean Publishing:

OK, that's it!


If you have any feedback or questions about this article, please email the Leanpub team about it at hello@leanpub.com!

If you have any questions or thoughts on writing and self-publishing with Leanpub, please join our global community of authors in our Authors Forum here!

Are you interested in self-publishing, and creating your first Leanpub book? Here are some quick tutorials for our most popular writing modes: http://help.leanpub.com/en/articles/3088382-quick-walkthroughs-for-getting-started-on-a-leanpub-book

Are you looking for great deals on Leanpub ebooks, ebook bundles, and courses? Sign up for our Weekly and Monthly newsletter sales here!

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/leanpub

Please subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/leanpub

You can also follow Leanpub in lots of other places!

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