At Leanpub we love universities that teach online courses, since this aligns closely with Leanpub's mission. So, we have a number of ways that Leanpub ebooks can be distributed with online courses, and we're confident that one of them will work for you.
If you have any questions about any of these approaches below, or if you want a quote for a bulk purchase, please email us at hello@leanpub.com, and one of our team members will get back to you promptly!
Since Leanpub ebooks have no DRM and since we are flexible and pragmatic, there are five ways that Leanpub ebooks can be distributed to students...
1. Files
We provide you with DRM-free files that you distribute yourselves to the students.
Leanpub ebooks are simply PDF and EPUB files with no DRM. So, we can provide you with the files directly, and you can distribute them however you like. For example, you could upload them to your own learning management system (LMS) for the course, which the students have access to.
2. Free Shared Coupon
We provide you with a free shared coupon link which works on Leanpub. We would provide a coupon link like the following:
The coupon would have unlimited uses, so that you could be sure students would be able to access the files. With this approach, students would get a Leanpub reader account as part of redeeming the coupon. This is no problem, however: the OpenIntro Statistics textbook (which has a free minimum price) at https://leanpub.com/os has over 480,000 readers on Leanpub from all over the world, so you can trust that Leanpub works at global scale.
3. Free Unique Coupons
We provide you with free unique coupon links. We would create a batch of unique coupon links, and send them to you to distribute. Each student would have their own unique coupon link to redeem. Frankly, this option is probably more work for you than option (2), but Leanpub does support it if you prefer it. The way this process works is explained here:
4. Direct Links
We provide you with direct links to the files on Leanpub. We would literally just send you two links like the following, and you would provide these links to all students:
With the direct link approach, students would not need to sign up for a Leanpub account to access the files. On the downside, we would not be able to track usage as easily.
5. Bit.ly Links
We provide you with a bit.ly link to the direct links in (4). This adds the ability to easily have reporting for the usages of the direct links, since the bit.ly links are what get provided to the students. Note that if the ebooks are purchased via a university bookstore, we can even create a 1-page PDF which contains a QR code for the bit.ly links (and a different version of the 1-page PDF without the QR code for display on the shelf), and that is what the bookstore distributes. We have done this in the past, and it worked well.
So, the short version is: we're flexible and helpful.
If you have any questions about any of these approaches above, or if you want a quote for a bulk purchase, please email us at hello@leanpub.com, and one of our team members will get back to you promptly!