Leanpub FAQ

This page has the FAQ for both Leanpub readers and authors.

Reader FAQ

If this FAQ doesn't help, please email us at hello@leanpub.com and we'll be happy to help you.

Q. What is Leanpub?
Leanpub is a Vancouver-based ebook startup that lets authors self-publish their books as they write them. That way, authors can develop a community of readers during the writing process, gauging interest in their project and, if they so choose, incorporating feedback from you, their readers.

Q. How long has Leanpub been around? Are you guys real?
Yes, we're real. The first copy of a Leanpub book was sold on 2010-04-21. The book was Eric Ries' Startup Lessons Learned, and the price of the book was $29.99 USD. After Startup Lessons Learned, Eric went on to write another book that you may have heard of.

Q. Why should I buy an in-progress Leanpub ebook?
As a Leanpub reader, you will receive updates to books when new versions are released or chapters are added, until the book is finished. This is a particularly powerful publishing method for books that deal with swiftly-changing subject matter like computer programming. By buying an in-progress book, you'll gain immediate access to the author's latest thinking on a subject, which can be very useful for technical subjects. Why wait until the knowledge in a book is common knowledge, when you can read it as soon as the author finished writing it? Also, you may also have the opportunity to interact with the author, commenting on his or her book page, or even communicating directly via email or Twitter. Good authors love feedback from good readers!

Q. What is Lean publishing?
Lean publishing is the act of self-publishing a book while you are writing it, evolving the book with feedback from your readers and finishing a first draft before optionally using the traditional publishing workflow. Leanpub is the best way in the world for authors to do the lean publishing process. To learn more, check out our manifesto.

Q. How do I give feedback to authors?
If an author activates the comments feature (and most do!), you can comment on the book's landing page. Authors can also let you know how to email them through their 'About' section on Leanpub, or in an email you'll receive when you buy the book. And many Leanpub authors will also let you know their Twitter ID on their book landing page, and look forward to hearing your comments & observations that way.

Q. If I buy an in-progress ebook, will I get free updates?
Yes, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! All readers of a book are treated the same way, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid.

Q. How can I register my interest in an in-progress but still unpublished book project?
Authors automatically get landing pages for books they're working on but haven't published yet. On this landing page you can enter your name and email address to show you're interested in hearing about the book when an early version is available, and you can even indicate (with no obligation) how much you'd be willing to pay for the book.

Q. Can I pre-order a copy of an unfinished book?
You can register your interest in an unpublished book on the book's landing page. Just enter your name and your email address, and when the book is first published, you'll get an email notification that the book is now available.

Q. What ebook formats does Leanpub publish?
When you buy a Leanpub book, you'll get it in three ebook formats: PDF (for all computers), EPUB (for iPad, Nook, etc.) and MOBI (for Kindle). All Leanpub books are available in all 3 formats, for one price.

Q. Does Leanpub sell print books?
Nope. However, Leanpub authors are free to sell their content however they like, and some do choose to offer print versions of their books with self-publishing sites like Lulu.

Q. Why should I buy an ebook on Leanpub when I can buy it elsewhere, like at the Amazon or Apple online bookstores?
We're here to support authors and we encourage you to buy their books wherever! But here are three reasons to buy their book on Leanpub:

A Leanpub author gets a 90% - 50 cents royalty on every Leanpub sale. That is way more than they would get with a traditional publisher, and even more than they get when selling on Amazon or Apple's bookstores. We show you how much money the author gets right on the purchase page; how many other publishers do that?
You can give the author feedback before the book is done.
You get early access to the author's latest thinking on their topic, without having to wait for the full publishing cycle to end before you can read that great chapter on your key topic. Since you'll receive free updates until the book is completed, you'll always be up to date.

Q. What if a book looks interesting but I want to take a peek inside before I buy it?
Most Leanpub authors let you download a sample PDF for free from the book landing page, so you can see if you like what they're doing before you commit to buying their work.

Q. How do I pay?
You buy Leanpub books using PayPal. You can use PayPal with a credit card, if you don't already have a PayPal account.

Q. Do you take payments from anything other than PayPal?
Someday we will, but since we're based in Canada this is a bit more annoying than it is for US startups. If you're mad about this, please email Stripe and ask them to support Canada, since we think they're the coolest payment startup on the planet.

Q. What is 'variable pricing'?
At Leanpub authors don't set one price in stone for their books. Instead, they set a suggested price and a minimum price (which can be as low as zero). Then you choose how much you want to pay.

Q. I'd like to become a Leanpub author - what should I do?
Great! You can get started by creating an account. You can also check out some of our spectacular how-to videos on our homepage. Also, if you want to have talking cartoon animals convince you to use Leanpub, that's there too.

Q. I'm still not sure about something! Can you help?
Sure! Just email hello@leanpub.com and we'll be happy to help you. (This email address sends email to everyone at Leanpub, so the right person can reply.)

Author FAQ

If this FAQ doesn't help, there are 2 other ways to get help...

Join the Leanpub authors Google Group at http://groups.google.com/group/leanpub and post your question there.
Email us at hello@leanpub.com and we'll be happy to help you.

If your question is general in nature, please use the Google Group so that other Leanpub authors can benefit from your question being answered. We check the group too, so we'll see your question and reply there...

Q. Do you take payments from anything other than PayPal?
We will accept non-PayPal payments once one of Amazon Checkout, Google Checkout or Stripe is available for merchants based in Canada. We understand that a small percentage of readers either cannot or will not use PayPal. Please bear with us: we are a bootstrapped startup based in Canada, and the cool payment startups you read about on Hacker News (e.g. Stripe) don't work for Canadian merchants yet.

Q. I'm a Leanpub author, and even after reading all these FAQs I'm still stuck! Can you help?
Sure! Just email hello@leanpub.com and we'll be happy to help you. (This email address sends email to everyone at Leanpub, so the right person can reply.)

Q. I created an account and a book, found it in my Dropbox and I edited the Book.txt file. I then returned to the Leanpub website and generated a preview. However, the preview didn't have the contents of Book.txt that I just updated. What's up?
You need to write your actual content in separate Markdown files. The Book.txt file is just a list of files. See the sample content for each Leanpub book type at these links for business, fiction and technical books.

Q. Can you convert my book to the proper formats if I suppy you with the typescript in PDF?
We would have to go from the PDF to Markdown (which is our manuscript format), and then from there we would produce PDF, EPUB and MOBI. We don't offer this service at the moment.

Q. What program should I use to edit Markdown files?
Any text editor works. For programmers, we recommend writing in Emacs, vi or TextMate. For non-programmers, we recommend iA Writer for Mac and iPad. If all else fails, you can also use TextEdit on Mac or Notepad or Wordpad on Windows.

Q. What if I want to preview the Markdown without generating the book on Leanpub?
There are 3 ways to do this:

You can either use a text editor that has a built in Markdown previewer. On Mac there's Mou, and on Windows there's MarkdownPad.
You can keep using your favorite text editor and use an external Markdown preview program. We like the idea of this, since we are very partial to our text editors. If you use a Mac, you can use Marked, which is a standalone a Markdown preview program.
You can use a WYSIWIG Markdown editor. See the next question.

Q. I don't actually want to write Markdown by hand; I want a WYSIWYG editor for Markdown! Does such a tool exist?
We want this too! Here's the best one we know about currently: Texts. It has a Mac and Windows version. We've tried the Mac version; it's still at an early stage but we think it looks promising. Please give this a try and give its developer some feedback.

Q. I don't like any of those text editing options. Can you suggest others?
There's an Adobe AIR app called Gonzo which should work on Mac and Windows. A Leanpub author has contributed a review of MarkdownPad and a review of Gonzo with an eye on their suitability for use writing Leanpub books.

Q. I already have a bunch of content in Word. What should I do?
You need to convert your Word document or documents into Markdown. Here's how this works:

Save as HTML from Word by choosing "Web Page (.htm)". Note that you MUST choose the option "Save only display information into HTML", not the default "Save entire file into HTML" option.
Put the HTML file or files into the convert_html folder in your Leanpub book Dropbox folder.
Click the "Convert Files" button on the Import page. This should create Markdown for you. After this, you can continue wrting your book in Markdown. (You want to do this import process once, not a bunch of times. So please don't write in Word and do this process every time you publish or preview -- that will cost you time in the long run. Learn Markdown; you'll be happier.)

Leanpub has bet the company on Markdown. Specifically, we claim that Markdown is a better way to write books than Word, OpenOffice, DocBook, anything. If we're wrong, we're dead. If we're right, we have an advantage. Also, Leanpub is based on the idea that publishing while you write is helpful. We call that idea "Lean Publishing"; see the manifesto for the full spiel :)

More broadly, Leanpub is based on the idea that it's absurd that in 2012 there is no good way to write a book. Using a bunch of Markdown files is the best thing we have come up with, but fundamentally most of the ways that people write and publish books today are just barbaric. Proprietary document formats, unreliable programs, no ability to version control your files and see meaningful differences, no way to interact with your readers as you write, etc. We might as well be using typewriters or quill pens. We're doing our part to help fix this global catastrophe; will you do yours? :)

Q. I'm still a bit confused in terms of how to actually go about the layout and editing part. Can you help?
The best thing to do is look at the sample content for each Leanpub book type at these links for business, fiction and technical books.

I'll try to explain briefly here.

The chapter structure is separate from the files.

# This is an h1, which becomes a chapter

## This is an h2, which becomes a section

### This is an h3, which becomes as subsection

Q. Do I put all the posts I want into one file can call that chapter1.txt? Do I have to create the Book.txt file in the order I want them to appear?
The Book.txt file just puts the files in order. (You could write an entire Leanpub book in one file, and then Book.txt would just list that file name.) The content of the files determines the chapters, sections etc. Any

# Title at the beginning of a line

becomes an h1 which is a chapter. Everything after that will be in that chapter until the next

# Title at the beginning of a line

which will start the next chapter.

Q. I tried to generate a preview of my book, and I waited a couple hours and nothing happened. Is there a delay?
Depending on the size of your book, there's about a 2 - 10 minute delay. Chances are if you don't see it in 10 minutes it didn't generate. We currently write a file called book_generation.log to the preview or published directories, which is primarily for our debugging. If you have any issue with this, please email hello@leanpub.com and attach the book_generation.log file.

Q. I accidentally renamed the Book.txt file to book.txt. Is there an issue?
Just rename it back to Book.txt and then there's no issue :)

I want to only import blog posts from the last 2 years, but the Leanpub import gets all my posts. How do I fix this?
Leanpub makes a separate file for each post it imports. So you can just delete the files you don't want from your Leanpub Dropbox folder, and remove them from the Boox.txt file. Or, if your blogging platform supports custom RSS feeds for categories or dates, you can make an RSS feed containing only the posts you want (by category, say) and then import that feed into Leanpub instead of your full feed.

Q. How do I use an image for my cover page?
Just put a file called title_page.png in your images directory, and that will get used. The file should be at 300 pixels per inch (PPI) resolution for best quality. The actual size of the image varies based . Smaller files and resolution values work too (for example, 432x648 at 72 PPI), however these images will be scaled and may look fuzzy. So, for best results use 1800x2700 @ 300 PPI. Note that if you have 72 PPI images in your book we do convert them

Q. I need more help learning about images. Can you help?
You insert an image like this:

![This is the Image Caption](images/LeanpubLogo1200x610_300ppi.png)

That's it! (See this web page for details on images in Markdown.) We support PNG, JPEG and GIF formats for images.

Note that it's important to get the size and the resolution of the image right:

We use 300 pixels per inch (PPI) in our books, and we recommend you use that for your images. Any smaller PPI is scaled up to 300 PPI. Since we scale up to 300 PPI, your image may look blurry if it's a smaller PPI. However, the file size will be a lot smaller at a smaller PPI, so this is a tradeoff.
If you save your image in a 300 PPI format, a 1200 pixel wide image takes 4 inches (1200 pixels / 300 pixel per inch = 4 inches)
However, if your save your image in a 72 PPI format (the default in most programs), it can only be 288 pixels wide (72 PPI * 4 inches = 288 pixels). If it's wider, it will bleed into the right margin, and if your image is much too big it may not show up at all. (Please don't use 72 PPI though, since scaling looks like absolute garbage!)

Different book types have different default paper sizes. Each different paper size has a different maximum image width, before your image will bleed over the margin. Currently all Leanpub books have 1 inch margins. Before we get into specifics there's one really important thing to note: Watch Your File Sizes! Before publishing your book, you should look at the sizes of your images in the images directory. If your images are huge, your book will be too. This is especially true at 300 PPI -- the images are a lot bigger than you're used to at 72 PPI. A simple tip to avoid problems is to use JPEG for all photographs, and to use 80% quality or lower. For figures that are drawings instead of photographs, PNG will look better than JPEG. You should be fine with PNG for these, since drawings typically produce files that are a lot smaller than photographs.

Next, here is what you need to know for the different Leanpub book types...

Technical Books
A technical book defaults to 8.5" x 11" paper. Subtracting margins, you have 6.5" x 9" to work with. So your image can be up to 1950 pixels wide and up to 2700 pixels high at 300PPI. Your cover page uses the full page width, so it should be exactly 2550 pixels wide and 3300 pixels high at 300 PPI. If this is a technical book, the default title_page.jpg shows you an example of this.

Business Books
A business book defaults to Digest paper (5.5" x 8"). Subtracting margins, you have 3.5" x 6" to work with. So your image can be up to 1050 pixels wide and up to 1800 pixels high at 300PPI. Your cover page uses the full page width, so it should be exactly 1650 pixels wide and 2400 pixels high at 300 PPI. If this is a business book, the default title_page.jpg shows you an example of this.

Fiction Books
A business book defaults to Digest paper (5.5" x 8"). Subtracting margins, you have 3.5" x 6" to work with. So your image can be up to 1050 pixels wide and up to 1800 pixels high at 300PPI. Your cover page uses the full page width, so it should be exactly 1650 pixels wide and 2400 pixels high at 300 PPI. If this is a fiction book, the default title_page.jpg shows you an example of this.

Note that we have a whole section in each sample book about images. See the sample content for each Leanpub book type at these links for business, fiction and technical books.

Q. I have a ton of 72 PPI images. Do I really need to convert them to 300 PPI?
No. You can try putting them in your book at 72 PPI. We convert them for you. We're just saying that our automatic conversion may not be as good as what you would do manually.

Q. Can I specify a font?
Currently we don't support this, since we need to use open source fonts. If you let us know the exact fonts you're using we'll see if there's anything close, and offer a font choice on the book page.

Q. What are the plans for being able to customize the headers and footers?
We plan to support producing 2 PDFs: a screen-optimized and a print-optimized one. The screen-optimized one wil be centered, the print one will look better when printed on Lulu. Features of the print one should include: a) alternating headers (both will have the title and page number, but alternating, or they'll have the chapter on one side and section on the other side) b) alternating gutters

Q. How do I get the system to pick up my changes?
As soon as you save the files in the book folder, Dropbox will pick them up (assuming it is running) and the little Dropbox icon will look like a spinning thing. Once it's back to the green checkmark, Dropbox has the files. (Or, just wait about 10-20 seconds.) After this is true, clicking the publish button will trigger book generation with the latest files, since we always get the latest files from Dropbox.

Q. Can I delete my book? How?
As long as your book has no sales, you can delete your book. The button is at the bottom of the Edit Info page. If your book has sales, we have to offer it to its existing readers, so you currently can't delete it. In the future we will presumably add the ability to "archive" a book, so that it has no new sales but that its existing readers can still access it.

Q. Can the ebook be read on iPad, Kindle, Sony and other readers?
We support three formats: PDF, ePub (for iPad, Sony, Nook, etc.) and MOBI (for Kindle).

Q. Are the generated PDFs "PDF/X-3" (this is what both Lulu and Blurb are demanding for using their PDF-to-print workflow)?
We're not sure if they're "PDF/X-3", but we do know that authors have printed and sold Leanpub PDFs on Lulu. For example, go here.

Q. I have problems importing my blog, can you help?
Yes, we can! If you have any problems importing, please email hello@leanpub.com and we'll help you get your blog imported manually.

Q. If I import my blog, are those files available in Dropbox?
Yes! They will show up there after the import is complete.

Q. I have co-authors. Is my inviting them to the Dropbox folder expected/appropriate from your perspective?
Yes. Note that we don't have full co-author support in the website, so it will still be you clicking the publish button, seeing the sales, etc. We plan to add proper co-author support in the next few months: the data model already supports it (see The Venture Hacks Bible, which has both Nivi and Naval as authors).

Q. What about marketing? Will Leanpub market my book?
Right now we don't offer much help! (We have a bestsellers page, but this won't help you if you've sold no books!) Now, over time, we'll build the ability to browse books by category, etc, as well as facilitate the social discovery of your book by people who have purchased or liked similar books. For now, however, think of Leanpub as a way of monetizing your existing blog subscribers or Twitter followers. These people are your audience, and a certain subset of them (our hypothesis is 1% - 5%) are looking for a way to give you money for content you have already written. Leanpub is the best way of enabling this to happen, since we make that content into a book for you...

Q. What if a traditional publisher is interested in my Leanpub book?
At Leanpub you hold the copyright: you can self-publish it on Leanpub while you are shopping it around. This way, if you get traction on Leanpub, this will help you build buzz and strengthen your negotiating hand with publishers. For example, you can ask to keep the e-book rights, since the Leanpub royalty rate of 90% minus the 50 cent flat fee is much better than what most publishers offer!

Q. If I publish my book on Leanpub, can I also sell it on Amazon or anywhere else online?
Leanpub produces and sells PDF, EPUB (for iPad) and MOBI (for Kindle) formats. We have no lock in, however: you are free to sell the Leanpub-produced files anywhere you want, including on the Kindle store via Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing program. We charge you nothing: this is your work; you own it. (Heck, you can even stick the Leanpub PDFs on Lulu to do print books; authors have done this.) The way we make our money is that we're confident you will also sell your work on Leanpub (as we pay 90% - 50 cents royalty, which is higher than Amazon or Apple, and we offer a nice storefront with an easy way to automatically distribute updates to your readers).

Q. Is it possible and permissible to take the .mobi file and directly upload it to the Kindle Store under our own name?
Yes, you can do that! You don't need our permission, but you have our blessing! :)

We are planning to offer a service that makes it easier to do this, and we're planning to charge for it on a per-book basis. But even once we offer this service, you can just do it yourself for free since it's your work.

We're authors too, and the last thing an author wants is to feel like someone else owns their work or controls what they can do with it. It's yours. We're more than happy for you to make money in as many revenue streams as possible. As a courtesy to us, we would appreciate it if you left the mention of Leanpub in the second page (to help our marketing) when you sell it elsewhere, but you can remove that too if you want.

Our recommendation is to wait until the book is complete before putting it in the Kindle store and iBookstore, but you can do whatever you want. (Heck, you can even use Leanpub to make your book and put it in the Kindle store without ever selling it on Leanpub. However, from our perspective, it makes sense to also sell your books on Leanpub since we offer a better royalty structure as well as a nice mechanism to distribute updates to your in-progress books to your readers.

Q. What do you guys think about Amazon and Apple's bookstores? And what do you think about competitors that either charge a flat fee or take a cut to help to put books on the Amazon and Apple stores?
First off, we think that the Amazon and Apple bookstores are great, and that all finished books should be for sale in both stores. We have a premium feature (which costs a $99 flat fee to use) where we export Leanpub books directly to both stores for you (see details in the next question), and you can also do this yourself with your Leanpub book for $0.

Now, we think this makes sense for finished books, but not for in-progress books. While a Leanpub book is in-progress, we feel it makes sense to only be sold on Leanpub, since that way your readers get automatic updates when you publish new versions, etc. If you're writing a book and publishing lots of versions of it while you're writing, the last thing you want to deal with is having to update your book in a bunch of storefronts every time you release a new version.

When a book is completed, we expect that enterprising authors will also want their books to be sold on the iBookstore and the Kindle store, since those storefronts get legitimate traffic. We don't see ourselves as competing with Amazon or Apple: both their storefronts are great places for finished books that target their respective platforms.

However, we don't think that this is necessarily true of the ather places that sell ebooks. While any Leanpub author is free to sell their Leanpub books wherever they want, we feel that storefronts other than Amazon or Apple don't produce much traffic themselves. (This is true of Leanpub too!) To promote your book, you need to do the work yourself, with blogging, Twitter, etc. To concentrate effort (and PageRank), it makes sense to point people at one storefront in your blog posts, tweets, etc. (We want that place to be Leanpub, obviously -- Amazon and Apple can take care of themselves :) Also, the reason we structured our royalties the way we do is so that you get a better deal with Leanpub, so you'll want to point at Leanpub so you make the most money from your marketing efforts!

Q. Can I use Leanpub to publish my book(s) to the Apple iBookstore and the Amazon Kindle Store?
Yes! To find out more, login to Leanpub, go to your book page and click on the iBooks and Kindle link to learn more, or read below for the details.

How does it work?

Login, go to your book page and click on the iBooks and Kindle link.
Edit your book description and pick a "BISAC Category" for your book (we have a link to the list on the page).
Click a button.
Wait a few days for the submission to both stores to go through.

What do you get?

We get an ISBN for you.
We publish your book in the Apple iBookstore.
We publish your book in the Amazon Kindle store.
We pass through 100% of your book's profit from those stores. We pay these via PayPal. We will pay these royalties quarterly, unlike your normal Leanpub royalties which are paid monthly. We will show your revenue updates on the sales page. Unlike normal Leanpub royalties, you pay any PayPal transfer fees on the transfer. (We have to do this since we're not taking a % of the profit.)

What does this cost you?
Clicking the button costs $99. We subtract as much of this as possible (up to the full $99) from your outstanding royalties. The rest (if any) is paid via PayPal. (Any amount subtracted from your outstanding royalties is shown on your sales page as "Royalties Applied to Channel Publishing".)

Why are we doing this?
At Leanpub we want to remove all the barriers between an author writing a book and a reader buying and reading it. Lean publishing is the most important aspect of this, so that's what we've focused on first. We still have lots of work to do, but we now think that Leanpub is the best way to self-publish in-progress ebooks.

However, when the book is done, where do you want to sell your book besides Leanpub?
The obvious answers are the Kindle store and the iBookstore. Those are the two storefronts that matter the most for finished ebooks.

While you have always been free to publish your Leanpub books to the Apple iBookstore and the Amazon Kindle Store yourself, this is more of a hassle than it should be. This is especially true for non-US citizens (e.g. Canadians like us) who want to publish to the iBookstore.

So, we decided to build this feature to make publishing to the Kindle store and the iBookstore as easy as possible.

Please Note:
This feature is intended to be used when you are done your book. While your book is in-progress we don't think it makes sense to sell your book on the iBookstore or the Kindle store.

So, this feature is good for publishing the finished book version to both stores. If there are any issues we will correct them (which is why we say "up to 3 submissions" on the page), but we aren't intending this to be something you use on a repeated basis. This is something you do once, after you have finished your Leanpub book and are celebrating. (There is currently some manual work involved in this process, and we're not in the business of selling an unlimited amount of manual work for a flat fee!)

You are obviously still free to publish your book to the Apple iBookstore and the Amazon Kindle Store yourself. This is an optional convenience feature we are providing. We don't believe in lock-in. You own your book.

Note that we have no plans to offer a similar convenience service for publishing and selling print books. We don't want to get into the print book business. We recommend that if you do want to do this that you sell the PDF yourself on a site like Lulu.

We hope this is a useful feature to many of you when you are done your book(s). If you have any feedback about it, please email the Google group or hello@leanpub.com directly.

Q. Do all Leanpub books need to start as blogs?
No! You can start from scratch, or from any content (that you own!) that has an RSS feed. Any content with an RSS feed can be imported into Leanpub. This includes different blogging platforms (LiveJournal, Blogger, Typepad, etc) and microblogging platforms (Twitter, etc). Or, you can start from scratch and write the entire book on Leanpub. If you import your RSS feed, what happens is that each RSS feed entry (blog post) turns into a file in your Dropbox folder.

Q. Most blogs are just electronic diaries; who, except maybe friends and family, would be interested in that?
That's true: many blogs are of no interest to anyone but their creators. Most diaries fall into this category. However, even diaries can be of interest if they are well-written. More generally, many blogs are really either collections of essays or contain 1 or more in-progress books in them. For example, Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters is a well-regarded book, which is a collection of essays which were originally published on his blog. In the Leanpub example, both Startup Lessons Learned and Venture Hacks are good reading, even though they were produced with no editing by their authors at all. However, we don't think that most Leanpub books will be produced with no editing. Instead, we expect that authors will import their blogs as a starting point, and then go through the process of "curating" their posts: deleting the "I just had a great lunch" type of posts, and editing, rearranging and expanding others. At the end of this process, you have a manuscript. The great thing is that you get to sell as you go, and get real feedback from readers (as well as money)...

Q. What if I have posts in my blog that aren't relevant?
You would just delete these posts entirely by deleting the files from your Dropbox folder and removing their names from Book.txt.

Q. What about photo books?
We don't add much value here. We recomend Lulu or similar services.

Q. Can I change the price of my book after creating it? For example, start cheap, grow the book based on feedback from readers, and increase its price as it's getting more valuable?
Yes, absolutely. You have complete control over the pricing, and we encourage new models of thinking about book development and pricing. This is exactly the model we think will work for many books. Publishing early to get early adopters for feedback and buzz is essential, and setting the price very low at the beginning helps this. You can change the price whenever you want in either direction, but we recommend starting low and increasing it over time so your early adopters don't feel taken.

Also, we support variable prices for books, so you can have a low (or free) minimum price, and a higher suggested price. Then as the book gains traction you can raise the minimum price and/or the suggested price. If your book lives up to the pattern we have seen with multiple books, about a third of people will pay the suggested price, a third will pay the minimum price and a third will pay somewhere in between. Finally, the odd person will pay more than the suggested price, even with your book having a decent spread between minimum and suggested prices. To optimize revenue and readership, you can run experiments where you lower the minimum price and/or raise the suggested price, and see what happens.

Q. If I signed up with you, would I be free to have my finished book printed and sold, separately? I'd get my own ISBN as well as copyright.
Yes! Currently we recommend putting your Leanpub PDF on Lulu. See this book for an example of a Leanpub book on Lulu. We take precisely $0 of the revenue you make outside of Leanpub -- whether that's direct PDF sales, print sales, etc :)

Q. How do you make your money?
We take the money from people who buy your book, and give you 90%, minus a 50 cent flat fee, of it. (Currently we do PayPal royalty transfers monthly, once an amount of $40 is reached.) You can tell how many people bought your book: you see a list of every sale (including the date purchased, the total paid and your royalty) on your book sales page.

Q. I didn't get my download link!
If you paid by eCheck with PayPal, it may take a few days for you to receive your download link, since that's how long it takes us to get notified by PayPal that the payment was received. So we recommend using either your PayPal balance or a credit card with PayPal. If there's any other issue, please email hello@leanpub.com and we'll fix it.

Q. Can I pay by eCheck with PayPal?
Yes. However, it may take a few days for you to receive your download link, since that's how long it takes us to get notified by PayPal that the payment was received. So we recommend using either your PayPal balance or a credit card with PayPal.

Q. I'd like to use Git and GitHub when I write my book, besides syncing with Dropbox. Do I have to write a script to only copy the content files into the Leanpub Dropbox folder?
No, it's even easier than that! We don't download any .git directories or .gitignore files from the folder you use with Dropbox, so your Leanpub Dropbox folder can just be a Git repository that you also push to GitHub! Whenever you click the publish button we just pull all the new stuff (ignoring .git, .gitignore and any other dot files) from Dropbox, and everything just works. This is the workflow that Peter Armstrong, Leanpub's co-founder, is doing with his Lean Publishing book, and it works fine.

Q. How do I update the cover image on my book page?
Just do a preview or publish and the book page will update with whatever title page is in your book, whether that's a title_page.png or title_page.jpg file you put in manuscript/images, or whether it's the automatically-generated title page we create if you don't provide a title page image.

Q. I'd like to use Leanpub to help an elderly parent create a book, but he's not computer savvy. Is this a good use of Leanpub? Is there anything you can do to help?
It's a great use of Leanpub. We're glad to help, but the good news is that we don't need to do anything special here. The following process will work for you:

Create a new Leanpub account & book for your father. You can use his email address for this.
Presumably he does not have a Dropbox account. Assuming this is true, when his email address gets the Dropbox sharing request from Leanpub, have him forward the email to you. You can either:
a) just accept the sharing request using your Dropbox account
b) accept the sharing request by creating a new Dropbox account for him, then send your Dropbox account a sharing request on his Dropbox folder
Regardless of how you did #2, you're good to go. You can edit his book on your computer using your Dropbox account. Whenever you want to publish a new version for him, just login as him and click publish.
Note that the book will sync with the Dropbox account that accepted the sharing request in #2, so you will see the generated books a bit faster if you just use your Dropbox account, since there won't be an extra Dropbox sync step through an intermediate Dropbox account.

If this doesn't make sense, please email hello@leanpub.com and we'll be glad to help.

Q. I am using vim to write my Leanpub book and I'm having issues with code snippet markup. Can you help?
Switch to Emacs.

Just kidding!

A Leanpub author shared this:
I just want to share a little fix I made to the markdown syntax in order to make it working with the code markup that this wonderful service requires when you want to insert a snippet of code in your books.

Just create a markdown.vim file in your .vim/after/syntax dir and add the following lines:
syn match markdownLeanCode '^<<(.*)$'
hi def link markdownLeanCode markdownH1

Now your code snippets won't mess up with the official markdown syntax provided by Vim

Q. Sorry for all the questions!
Don't apologize -- thank you! We absolutely love customer questions and feedback. Please email any and all feedback to hello@leanpub.com. Everyone in our company reads the email sent to that address.