Leanpub Buzz

Leanpub in the Media!

Leanpub has even been mentioned in the mainstream media!

Time.com

So. You got a blog. You want to turn it into a e-book, with a minimal amount of fuss and hard work.

You need Leanpub. It’s a new service for writers who want to do minimalist home-grown publishing on their own terms, in a variety of formats that will suit owners of iPads, Kindles, and other e-readers.

It’s also a completely new approach to the technical side of e-book publishing. When you sign up to Leanpub, you get access to a shared folder on Dropbox, into which you can put text files for your book.

Giles Turnbull, Time.com, Leanpub: How to Turn Your Blog into an Instant E-Book

Cheers from Leanpub Authors!

Leanpub authors and press people have said, tweeted, emailed and blogged lots of nice things about us! Here's some of the ones we like the best...

Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman wrote a great post entitled "Overcoming Perfection Rules" describing using Leanpub to try the lean publishing approach for the first time. We love that post title, as it sums up our lean publishing philosophy in a mere 3 words.

I have a tough time with my perfection rules. I want to be perfect. I’m not, of course. I want to be.

So using leanpub and publishing early and often pushes me way out of my comfort zone. Which is why you haven’t heard anything from me about my book under development up until now. Yesterday, I announced the beta of my newest book Manage Your Job Search: Reduce Your Overwhelm, Focus Your Search, and Get Your Next Job!

I couldn’t just push the button and publish. Oh no, no, no. I had to make it a beta, because it’s not done. It’s not even close. Oh, more than the outline of the book is there. The networking chapter is great. How to use personal kanban is great. Much of how you reflect on the past week is great. The tips and traps are great. And, I know they are not complete, which is making me nuts.

That’s not all that’s making me nuts. The copyediting is not done. The layout is not done. The what to do now is not done. I need feedback from readers to know what to do next, which is why I needed to publish, and oh boy, it’s not perfect. That’s why I don’t have a real cover, because I don’t know that I have the correct title. How do I balance my perfection rules against the need for feedback?

Beta! Especially if I explain that it’s a beta book. That’s what I did in my announcement yesterday. I was able to balance my need for perfection against my need for feedback.

I bet my fellow leanpub authors are delighted to not have to hear the teenage drama queen angst on the leanpub list anymore. I will get the feedback I need. I will be able to perfect the book from people looking for a job. It’s a win-win.

If you are looking for a job, please do check out my new book, Manage Your Job Search: Reduce Your Overwhelm, Focus Your Search, and Get Your Next Job! It’s not perfect; it’s a beta book. I would love your feedback.

Elisabeth Hendrickson

Elisabeth Hendrickson wrote a fantastic blog post which captures the entire reason Leanpub exists, from the perspective of an author who had just finished her Leanpub book -- in 4 days.

A funny thing happened on my way to inbox 0 last week: I wrote a book in 4 days.

I didn’t mean to. And actually it’s not true to say that I wrote it in just 4 days. I assembled it in 4 days; I wrote it over 15 years. Allow me to present There’s Always a Duck, now available on Leanpub.

--Elisabeth Hendrickson, It's a Book

If you're wondering whether to try Leanpub, go read her entire blog post. It sells Leanpub better than we can!

BTW, I have to say that I'm incredibly impressed with Leanpub.

You have made it absurdly easy to do something I've been talking about doing for a long time (turning my blog archive into something more permanent).

I've played around with various services: CreateSpace, Lulu, and SmashWords. They're all easy enough to use, but no matter what service I chose, I recognized that it was going to be a pain to import all that content and convert it into a format that would work. Importing from an RSS feed into plain text / markdown, then auto-generating the resulting ebook formats is brilliantly simple.

Plus, using DropBox as the shared repository is sheer genius. As a geek, I've used svn and git as a repository for my prose. Source control is my friend. But setting up a shared repo can add a wee bit of friction. Using DropBox is a beautiful friction-free way to share while still letting me version my files if I decided it's needed. Really, really sweet.

Also, having just purchased Laurent Bossavit's recent Leanpub title, Leprechauns of Software Development, I was delighted by how easy it was to be a paying customer.

I had no intention of spending my day working on converting my archives into a book. It was way down on my priority list. But I'm having so much fun (despite the mysterious "there was a failure..." message)! Now if I can just keep distractions at bay long enough to finish, I'll finally have a book done. Wow.

Oh, and your customer service rocks also! I'm very grateful for your personal attention!

--Elisabeth Hendrickson, email (reprinted with permission)

Nivi from Venture Hacks

Thanks to Peter Armstrong and Scott Patten at Leanpub for making this book happen. If you want to turn your blog into a book, get in touch with them.

Babak Nivi, The Venture Hacks Bible

Leanpub's Founders Being Interviewed

Peter and Scott, Leanpub's founders, have been guests on a couple of podcasts recently. We'll be adding links as the podcast episodes are published.

Mark Graban, who has written a couple of Leanpub books, recently did a podcast with us. It went long enough that Mark split it into 2 parts. Here's part one. (In the podcast, the person who talks too quickly and runs over people is Peter; the person who speaks calmly and slowly is Scott.)

Srinivas Rao, author of The Skool of Life, interviewed us for a podcast on Blogcast FM. We talked about our manifesto, how Leanpub can help you engage with your readers and much more. Give it a listen.

We love talking about Leanpub. If you want to interview us, just email hello@leanpub.com and we'll set it up.