Leanpub Leapfrogs Amazon KDP with AI-Powered Book Translations

Leanpub, the online self-publishing platform popular with authors and readers of books about business and technology, has released its full TranslateAI service, which authors can use to translate their books into over thirty languages.

Affordable Book Translations are a Game-Changer for Self-Published Authors

"This is a real game-changer for self-published authors," according Leanpub co-founder Peter Armstrong. "It unlocks new audiences all around the world for books that would otherwise have never been translated due to the time and expense involved."

Leanpub's Unique Technology Makes Simulatneous Full-Book Translation and Production Possible

In a recent webinar, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp summarized how the technology works, and why Leanpub is especially well-positioned for translating books.

"The AIs can read our technical book production specification. That means they can understand the book production parts, and differentiate those from the content or body part of the book, and so all of that helps in the production of the translation in the end."

"It's like a big puzzle that the process it breaks into parts, and each translation of each part is informed by knowledge of that whole."

Enabling Reader-Author Interaction to Improve AI Translations

According to Epp, "There's always going to be feedback that you're going to want when you do something like this, if it's from a formal editor that you pay, or if it's from crowdsourcing, which is basically the way Leanpub books are edited."

Early adopter Leanpub authors have already been using Leanpub features and their own technical know-how to invite feedback on their translated books.

According to Epp, at least one author is integrating feedback from popular collaboration platforms, like the Microsoft-owned platform GitHub, which is used by tens of millions of programmers around the world.

"In the end, you could actually have translations down to the neighborhood level."

One reason this is possible is Leanpub's unique approach to self-publishing books, captured in its motto, "Publish Early, Publish Often".

"We've integrated the processes of writing, publishing, and selling ebooks in a way that makes it really easy to update your book for all your current and future readers based on reader feedback," says Epp.

"When I talk to people from the conventional book publishing industry, they mostly just refuse to believe anything like this is possible. Our translations are new, but we've been enabling collaborative, real-time book writing, publishing, and editing or updating, for over ten years."

A Real Opportunity for Genre Fiction Authors

Asked if the TranslateAI service was just for people writing books on business and technology, Armstrong answered: "Absolutely not! Our TranslateAI service can handle highly technical books with tables and images and indexes, but it can also handle genre fiction, like romance fiction, incredibly well."

Authors are not required to publish on the Leanpub platform if they use the TranslateAI service.

"You can use our service to translate your books without actually publishing them on Leanpub. You can just publish them on Amazon KDP where the original book is being sold, for example."

That might be passing up a big opportunity, though, explains Armstrong.

"When you publish a book on Leanpub and then translate it, you get a unique web page for your book in our bookstore, with your book title and other information translated into each language. You don't have to go set up 30 websites: we do it for you."

For media enquiries, please contact Len at len@leanpub.com.