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I'm writing a book or course on Leanpub. Do I own the copyright?
I'm writing a book or course on Leanpub. Do I own the copyright?

Keywords: Does Leanpub have any claim to copyright on anything I write?

Leanpub Support avatar
Written by Leanpub Support
Updated over a week ago

Leanpub never owns the copyright on anything published on Leanpub.

The copyright to your book or course is entirely owned by you, the author, unless you are writing the book for a publisher (such as an institution) or for a company you work for, or you have been contracted to write or translate the book or course by someone else who owns the copyright, etc.

For an individual author writing a book, you can choose either the default copyright message, or a customizable Creative Commons copyright. This is done at:

https://leanpub.com/YOUR_BOOK/settings/copyright

...making sure to replace YOUR_BOOK with your book's unique web address.

You can also customize the attribution and dates of the copyright, which will give you the following options:

Custom Copyright Owner
If you don’t put anything here, the book will be copyright by your name. Only fill this in if you need to override this with something else, like your company name or a list of people.

Copyright Custom Date Range
If you don’t put anything here, the book will be copyright from the year you created it on Leanpub to the year you last publish it in. (If these years are the same, that year will only be printed once.) Only fill this in if you need to override this with something else, say if you are including old material and you want those years included too. An example format of the text you enter here is “2007 - 2023”.


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

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