On occasion, authors approach us saying they have done their own calculation of their royalties, and tell us it doesn't match what they're seeing on their All Royalties page here https://leanpub.com/author_dashboard/royalties/summary, or elsewhere on Leanpub.
Now, every time this happens, from our perspective, the author has adopted an approach to calculating their royalties that is probably unique to them, typically complex, and, crucially, completely unknown to us.
In at least one case, an author was recording the details of every purchase email they received, and comparing that to their royalties owed as shown in their Leanpub account.
The difference was explained by refunds they hadn't noticed, but importantly, the discrepancy could have been explained by any number of other ordinary every-day human errors.
In another case, an author had evidently downloaded their royalties CSV summary (from the All Royalties page, there's a download link part of the way down), and mistakenly included a single extra sale in their sum, which of course didn't match what we showed them in their Leanpub account.
Why We Won't Investigate Issues Like This
We know it's unpleasant to see a difference like this, but please note that from our perspective, every feature we roll out helps all of our authors and readers, all around the world. Those features take work and time, both of which are limited, and we have to choose our priorities.
We're sorry, but we would be doing everyone who uses our service a real disservice by spending time tracking down individual issues like this, instead of making Leanpub better for everyone.
Reporting a Royalty Calculation Bug
With all of that said, of course if you believe you've found a bug, please tell us!
But reporting this kind of bug isn't as simple as just taking a screenshot and showing a typo or an error message, or something like that.
If you believe you see a discrepancy between your calculation of your royalties, and the amount of royalties you're seeing somewhere on Leanpub, you will need to provide us with the level of detail required for us to be confident there is not a human error somewhere.
So, if you want to report a potential bug, please email us at hello@leanpub.com with the following information, or information presented in the same spirit of required details:
- Email us from the email address associated with your Leanpub account
- Provide a link or links to the landing page for the book or books involved in the
- Provide us with a screenshot of the displayed royalty amount on Leanpub that does not match what you expect
- Shows us a screenshot of the spreadsheet (or other format) calculation you have performed, that does not match what you're seeing on Leanpub, and shows all the relevant information (we're sorry we can't be more detailed than that)
- Please do not provide us with any file to open, like a spreadsheet. Opening files is a security risk and our team members are not permitted to open them, sorry.
If you have any feedback or questions about this article, please email the Leanpub team about it at hello@leanpub.com!
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