Last updated on 2017-10-18
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The canonical reference works for Ruby on Rails, now in a convenient bundle.
Authors have earned$5,811,123writing, publishing and selling their books on Leanpub.
Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.Create a book today.
Write
- Write your book in simple plain text using our great writing features
- Create ebooks in multiple formats with one click from a single source text
- You can also write using your own plain text writing tool
- You can also upload a book if you prefer your own process to ours
Publish
- Publish instantly with one click
- Easily update your published book any time
- Publish early and serially using our in-progress publishing features
- Interact with readers to improve your book and find out what they think
Sell
- Instantly put your book up for sale
- Earn a royalty of 90% minus 50 cents per sale
- Customize a great-looking web page to help sell your book
- Set your own prices using our amazing variable pricing model
- Easily share your royalties with co-authors or good causes
- You can also sell your book elsewhere if you want to!
Leanpub Authors Love Leanpub
Roger D. Peng
Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
As an academic, I like Leanpub because it lets me write and get my ideas out there quickly. Leanpub is simply the best place for publishing my books.
Chris Hartjes
The Grumpy Programmer
Leanpub's book-creation tools allowed me to focus on creating the types of books I wanted to write instead of worrying how to create my own book publishing toolchain. I have never regretted using Leanpub to publish my ebooks.
Ryan Bigg
Author, Multitenancy with Rails
Leanpub takes the pain out of publishing. They provide the tools, you provide the books and then magic happens.
Taylor Otwell
Creator Of Laravel
I love using Leanpub because I can write my book using simple Markdown notation. Leanpub let's me focus on my content and they handle the rest.
Jeff Geerling
Author, Ansible for DevOps
With Leanpub, the first person who purchased my book for $9.99 almost two years ago (and only received a preface, and two short intro chapters) has had access to almost every bit of knowledge I've gained in those two years, and *that's* the value.
Matthew Guay
Content Marketer at Zapier
While most eBook exporter apps today can generate PDF files and many support ePub, there's one tool we recommend above all after trying 8 of the most popular: Leanpub.
W. Jason Gilmore
Author, Easy Laravel 5
Leanpub is a game changer for independent authors, removing the hassles associated with formatting, book production, and electronic sales, freeing up the time to do what we do best: write.
Reg "Raganwald" Braithwaite
Author, JavaScript Allongé, the "Six" Edition
Simple and lean, forces me to focus on writing and marketing, and pays excellent royalties.
Manuel Kiessling
Author, The Node Beginner Book
Four years ago, I joined Leanpub to just give it a try. Today, over 28,000 book sales later, I cannot help but say that I'm the biggest Leanpub fan on this planet!
Samantha Laing
Growing Agile
Leanpub helped me achieve my goal of publishing a book. Its simple, easy to use interface got my book up and making money within weeks, I love Leanpub!
Karen Greaves
Growing Agile
Leanpub makes publishing your own book super easy. The fact that you can release updates continually helps with the mindset of getting a minimum version out ASAP and then iterating to improve.
Phil Sturgeon
Author, Build APIs You Won't Hate
Leanpub helped me gauge interest in my book, get payments early on when it was only a few chapters, and has got me a bunch of sales just from people browsing around the site.
Paul Redmond
Author of Writing APIs With Lumen
Leanpub forces you to focus on writing and gives you immediate feedback. Allowing Leanpub to take care of the curation and delivery helped me focus on shipping my book.
Johanna Rothman
Author of 8 Leanpub books and counting…
Leanpub helps me see my books as I write them. Even better, I can find readers early, to read my books and offer suggestions. I can pivot, if I see the need.
Paul Bradshaw
Paul runs the MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University
I earn more royalties from my books on Leanpub than I do with well established publishers or through Amazon (which I publish on thanks to Leanpub's mobi conversion).
Aaron Sumner
Author, Everyday Rails Testing with RSpec
Leanpub made it simple for me to run with my book idea and build my reputation in the Ruby community. I went from first draft to first sale in days, not months or years.
Amir Rajan
Indie game developer and author
Leanpub let me write and publish incrementally, which lifted an immense weight off of my shoulders. With every iteration of my book, I found encouragement to keep going from my readers. I would have never finished my book if it weren't for Leanpub.
Simon Brown
Author, Software Architecture for Developers
Leanpub allows me focus on content, takes care everything else and offers an amazing author royalty. It’s a fantastic platform for writing and publishing books.
Daniel Root
Author, Trello Dojo
I love that Leanpub makes writing and publishing a beautiful book so simple. I no longer spin my wheels with layouts and formats - Leanpub gets out of the way when it's time to write, and then automates everything when it's time to publish.
Stop it, you're making us blush. We love you too.
Create A Book NowLeanpub puts authors first
Earn a 90% royalty, minus 50¢ per sale.
Publish to PDF, iPad and Kindle from one manuscript.(we make PDF, EPUB and MOBI versions for you).
Write using your favorite tools. Preview or publish new book versions with one click.
Write on your own computer and sync using Dropbox, GitHub or Bitbucket.
Publish your book early to get reader feedback, and publish new versions as often as you like.
Choose your own minimum and suggested prices, from $0 or $0.99 to $500.($9 to $29 is typical.)
You keep the rights to your book, not us. You can do a deal with a publisher at any time.
Produce a print-ready PDF or InDesign export of your finished book with one click.
Introduction to Lean Publishing
Introduction to Markdown and Markua
Finally, royalty rates that put authors first.
When you publish your book with Leanpub, you earn a 90% royalty, minus a 50¢ flat fee per sale.
Why is this royalty rate important? It means you earn $17.50 on the sale of a $20.00 book. If you worked with a conventional publisher who sold your book for $35.00, you'd typically make just $1.75! (The publisher would usually get about $17.50, and you would get about 10% of that.) With royalty rates this high, people will actually choose to pay more since they can see how much you will earn as an author.
You are free to publish your book elsewhere at the same time as you publish it on Leanpub. However, other platforms may not allow you to publish in two places at once. If you want to try an exclusive service, you can "retire" your book on Leanpub any time, and you can also come back and "unretire" your book if you conclude you were making more money on Leanpub.
You set your own prices using our variable pricing model and you can change them anytime. This means you can instantly change your prices in response to audience feedback or special events. It also means you can increase the price of your book over time, as you add more content, which is a great deal for people who buy your book early on.
If you publish your book on Leanpub, we will not get in the way if you later want to publish with a conventional publisher. In fact, this is a great outcome and it is one of the reasons Leanpub exists. We want unknown writers to be able to publish their books before they're finished, build an audience while they're writing, and then optionally go after a publishing contract. Some publishers may even let you publish your book on Leanpub until you finish it, and then take up the book into their own process when the time is right. That's exactly what happened with this book. (If you're worried that a publisher won't accept a book that's already been published on Leanpub, then you should make sure to ask them before you publish here!)
Publishers
We're building the best publishing workflow in the world. Sign up now and help us create the future of publishing, as Leanpub for Publishers evolves with your feedback.
Authors
Leanpub is the best way in the world to write a book. This is especially true if you're publishing an in-progress computer programming book, but you'll find all kinds of books here.
Causes
Leanpub empowers authors to support their favorite causes directly, by automatically sharing their royalties via our Leanpub for Causes program.
