Lean Publishing Tip of the Day: A Guide to Buying and Reading Books on Leanpub
Leanpub books can be updated by their authors at any time. This can mean anything from fixing a typo to adding an entirely new chapter.
Buying and reading ebooks on Leanpub should hopefully be pretty straightforward!
But for this Tip of the Day, we thought we'd record a casual video showing you the step-by-step details of how you can buy and read ebooks from our platform.
That includes an explanation of how you can read updates!
Leanpub books can be updated by their authors at any time. This can mean anything from fixing a typo to adding an entirely new chapter.
So, knowing how to navigate around Leanpub as a book buyer and reader is what this blog post and the accompanying video are for.
Finding Books in the Leanpub Bookstore
To find books on Leanpub, go to our homepage and click Books in the menu near the top left. That will take you here:
https://leanpub.com/store/books
On that page, you will see recent bestsellers, but you can use the search bar at the top to search, and you can use the little menus under the search bar to search by language, and the displayed list of books.
Leanpub's Book Lists
Here are lists of books you can view:
Hopefully that's self-explanatory!
Also hopefully self-explanatory!
The latest Leanpub books that have been published for the first time.
Leanpub authors and publishers set their own prices for their books.
Specifically, for each book they pick a Minimum Price and a Suggested Price. You choose what to pay.
The lowest price they can pick is Free. So, this list shows books with a Minimum Price of Free.
This list includes books that are only free with a Leanpub Reader Membership.
These are books with a Minimum Price of Free, but excluding books where you need a Leanpub Reader Membership to read them for free.
Leanpub books can easily be updated by their authors and editors and publishers any time, whether that's to fix a typo, or add a whole new part of chapter.
This list shows the books that have been updated most recently.
Languages
Leanpub books are available in over 30 languages. Just use the All Languages dropdown menu to select one.
Buying a Book from the Leanpub Bookstore
To buy a Leanpub book, you add it to your cart and checkout, completing your purchase with a credit card. PayPal is available in some locations.
Buying Books With Unpaid Royalties
Now, Leanpub also has a very cool third way to buy books:
If you are a Leanpub author and you have earned royalties from book sales that have not been paid to you yet, you can use these royalties to pay for books!
This is a very cool feature of being part of the Leanpub author community. You can use the proceeds from your own writing to feed your reading habit. Very cool.
Getting Community Edition Books
OK, there is actually a fourth way to get a Leanpub book: you can get a free "Community Edition" of a book if you share your email address with the author.
This is a common way for content creators to appeal to new readers: they give you something for free, and in return, you give them your email address so they can add you to their mailing list, for example.
Finding a Book in Your Leanpub Library
After you buy a book, it gets added to your Leanpub library:
https://leanpub.com/library/books
You can search your library for books you've purchased, and you can even "archive" books you no longer want to appear in the main library view. (It's easy to un-archive a book if you want to.)
Finding an Updated Version of A Book
Finding an updated version of a Leanpub book is easy: you just download it from your library again! (Or go back to the web browser reader if it's available.)
You can manage your email notifications for new versions of all the books in your Leanpub library in your account settings here.
Different Ways to Read a Leanpub Book Online and Offline
Most Leanpub books can be read in three ways:
Online: You can read the book in our online reader in your web browser.
PDF: You can download the book and read it in the PDF format.
EPUB: You can download the book and read it in the EPUB format. You can also send the EPUB format to Kindle, or use read it on other ereaders.
Some books are online available in the PDF and/or EPUB formats, if the author is using our Upload writing mode.
You can learn more about Leanpub ebook formats in this Help Center article.
Creating Your Own Leanpub Book
Did you know you can write and publish a book of your own on Leanpub?
It's free and easy to write in your web browser, and you can publish the first version of your book after you finish just your first chapter!
Writing a book can change your life - you can get started here any time and write at your own pace.
