The Partner Program and the Free With Membership programs are both optional, and they are different things.
The Partner Program is explained here:
https://leanpub.com/partner_program
The Free With Reader Membership program (where people can get some books for free, if the author makes their book free with a Reader Membership) is explained in "4. Reader Memberships with a 50% Author Revenue Share" here:
The crucial things are:
1. The Partner Program does not mean we give away your book for free to people with reader memberships. Instead, it means partners (currently only Learnerbly) can sell coupon codes. Then, once we get paid (about 1-2 months later) for those sales, we resolve that into a purchase, which gets paid after the royalty hold period is over (in case of any issues). So, there's a lag of about 3-4 months for Partner Program sales.
2. The Partner Program and the Free With Membership are not significant revenue / royalty sources yet. Combined, they're a single digit percentage in a typical month. So, if you're evaluating Leanpub based on them, just ignore them completely and focus on our core value proposition.
3. You don't have to participate in either the Partner Program or the Free With Reader Membership program.
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