On Tuesday, February 27, 2024 at 1pm PST we held our first author webinar!

In the webinar, Len talked about lots of the ways we can help you market your Leanpub books and courses and reach new readers to increase your revenue.

The webinar was held on Zoom, and we'll be publishing a version of it on our YouTube channel.

You can watch the video here:

This article was created to go along with the webinar, so there would be a record of what we talked about for people to read, with links to all the articles we mentioned.

To learn about other Leanpub webinars and new features and tips about book marketing, sign up for the Leanpub Author Update newsletter, and check out this article.

Below are some of the topics we'll be covering during the webinar, with helpful links to further resources:

We're going to go over this opening section a little quickly, since the point of the webinar is not a tutorial on how to write a book, but how to market one.

However, to set a foundation for everything else we're going to discuss, Len will start the webinar by creating a new book and explaining Leanpub's variety of writing modes.

You can find fill tutorials for our writing modes in this article:

Leanpub's writing modes are:

- Web Browser Writing Mode

- Upload Writing Mode

- Cloud Writing Mode (Dropbox and GitHub)

You can get started creating your own Leanpub book any time here:

You don't need to wait until after you publish your first chapter to start marketing your book!

On Leanpub, the moment you create a book, we create a web page for the book, where people can fill out a form to register their interest, and sign up for a notification email when you publish your book for the first time.

Think of it like building up a "subscriber" list for your book.

Write a great description of your book, set up your author profile, upload a book cover image, and optionally link to a YouTube video you record, and you're ready to start marketing your book, even before you start writing it.

Here's an in-progress article on this topic:

At Leanpub our motto is "Publish Early, Publish Often", which reflects our "Lean Publishing" philosophy:

Publish your book as you write it, chapter by chapter.

Now, there's a lot more to the idea than that! But it captures the heart of the idea, that you should start publishing almost as soon as you start writing.

Anyone who buys your book will get all your updates for free.

That way, you can enjoy all the conventional benefits of publishing a book when it's 100% complete, but you can also build an audience along the way, while you're writing.

You can read the Lean Publishing book here:

And you can watch Peter's original conference talk on Lean Publishing here:

Some of the most important decisions you'll make while marketing your book are your pricing decisions.

On Leanpub, pricing does not have to be a one-time decision, thanks to our Lean Publishing philosophy, and our "variable pricing" model.

Here's an article on this topic:

If you're going to be publishing your book chapter-by-chapter, we recommend you increase your book's price over time, charging more as you make it longer, and rewarding your "early adopter" readers by charging less at the beginning.

On Leanpub, you'll be setting both a Suggested Price and a Minimum Price, and letting people decide what to pay.

Letting people decide what to pay typically makes them very happy: it's a form of trust and respect and understanding on your part, and makes them feel empowered in return.

Sometimes people who pay a lower price actually come back and buy the book again later, as a way of saying thank you!

Now, pricing things is notoriously as complex a decision as you choose to make it, and we believe it's important to experiment with different price points and approaches.

Here are some things to keep in mind on the topic of book pricing:

- Typically, you should set your book price higher than than you think you should. Authors often underestimate the value of their work, particularly if they are publishing non-fiction and they have learned about how self-published fiction is priced

- You will want to be able to opt in to Leanpub's promotional sales, and offer discount coupons of your own. So, your ordinary price should be high enough that you can offer people meaningful discounts from time to time.

- Remember, anyone who can't afford it can reach out to you and ask you for a discount coupon link, or even a free copy! We recommend being generous when you receive requests like this. These are new readers, not lost sales!

- People can buy multiple copies of Leanpub books at a time for their team or company, and they will typically choose a discount to the Suggested Price for their per-copy price, to essentially give themselves a bit of a bulk discount.

- Leanpub lets you create "Packages" with extra digital content, including everything from an audiobook version, to videos, to example spreadsheets, and more. We'll explain more about Packages below, but click here to see a great example of a bestselling Leanpub book that offers different packages for sale.

One of the most important things you can do to boost your book's sales is to opt in to Leanpub's discount sales.

You can do this on your Pricing page. Read more about how to opt in here:

If you follow us on Twitter/X, for example, you'll see an example how this typically works. Currently, every half hour, we post a link to a discounted book, like this:

We also post these discount links on Mastodon, though less frequently!

Please note that opting in to these sales is not a guarantee that your book will be included; there are a lot of books that have been opted in by their authors! However, we think it's definitely better to opt in and potentially have your book promoted by Leanpub automatically like this on social media.

Coupon sales and promotions are a key tool for marketing your book on social media, email newsletters, and elsewhere online.

You can find an article on creating coupon links here:

When you create a coupon for your book, you can set a maximum number of uses, a start and end date, the discounted price of course, and even a custom URL.

Here are some examples of coupon promotions you can create using these features:

- "The first 100 people to click this link will get 20% off my book!"

- "For the next 24 hours, click here to get my book for 20% off!"

- "Flash sale! Click here within the next hour to get my book for 20% off"

A very important use you can make of coupons is distributing free copies to potential reviewers or influencers. People love getting free copies of books, and (usually!) are flattered to be asked to write a review or a blurb for you, as long as you ask them professionally, with a customized email or message.

(A "blurb" is a short quote from someone about your ook, that is usually included on the back of a book, on the book cover, or at the beginning of a book.)

On Leanpub, you can sell "just the book", or you can sell "the book plus something else" packages.

The "something else" is a digital file (or multiple files) that you add as an "Extra" for sale with your book.

It's really up to you what you add: you can sell "the book plus an audiobook version", or you can sell the book with instructional videos, spreadsheets, or code samples, if you've written a technical or programming book.

You can read about our Packages feature here:

Here's an example of a bestselling Leanpub book with an excellent set of packages:

Each package is set out with its own description and price points:

The typical way to sell packages is to successively add more content to each package, and then increase the prices for the packages with more content.

Posting about your book consistently on social media is a necessary practice for all book marketing in the 21st century.

This is true whether your a self-published or a company-published author. Everyone has to do it. (Publishing companies even ask authors to submit their own business plans for their books nowadays, no kidding!)

Now, managing your social media presence is a huge topic unto itself, so we're not going to go into it too deeply in this particular author webinar.

However, you can read our guidance on this topic any time here:

When you're finished writing your book and ready to mark is as 100% complete and publish your final version, you're now at the point where you can unlock a lot of powerful new opportunities for marketing your book to new audiences.

Note how much marketing and audience-building you've done already though, if you published your book chapter-by-chapter! You're already way ahead on book marketing, compared to where you would have been if you published in a more conventional manner.

Now that you're done, the big decision you need to make is whether or not to do what people in the self-publishing world call "going wide".

"Going wide" means you publish your book on as many platforms as you can, basically.

We recommend going wide, but with one important caveat:

Since you're earning 80% on every sale on Leanpub, you'll want to direct people here when you're engaging with people directly.

Amazon and other platforms obviously have a lot more "passive eyeballs" searching them and being prompted to buy books on their favorite topics. But if you're personally trying to get someone to buy your book, like when you're standing in front of a conference, you'll want to direct people to Leanpub.

This is especially true if you are ever going to update your book. (Lots of authors come back to book 100% complete projects later, and add new chapters or edits to them.) Some authors who sell their books elsewhere will actually give people free coupon links to their book on Leanpub, so they can get updates.

If you want to export an "unbranded" ebook to publish on another ebook platform, you can do that with one click. Read more about this feature here:

To use a self-publishing platform to sell a print version of your book, you'll need a print-ready PDF file.

Read about how you can generate a print-ready PDF from Leanpub here:

Now, learning how to get your book into print may not be something you want to do yourself!

If that's the case, you can pay us to do this for you, with our Publish on Amazon service.

You can learn more about our Publish on Amazon service here:

If you've written a non-fiction book, you can use our TranslateAI service to translate your book into one or more other languages.

It's really amazing, and a great deal. Learn more here:

If you've written a non-fiction book, you can use our CourseAI service to turn your book into an online course with AI-generated and formatted multiple-choice questions.

People who take the course can get a certificate upon completion, which is great for people with corporate training requirements and budgets.

Learn more about CourseAI here:

Finally, to learn more about writing and self-publishing on Leanpub, and to keep up with our latest features and announcements, we highly recommend you sign up for our Author Update Newsletter here:

Thanks for attending our webinar! We'll have the video up on YouTube hopefully soon! Subscribe to our channel to keep up with the latest book launch videos, podcast episodes, and explainers!

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!

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