GlobalAuthor: 31 Translations, a Course, and More!

GlobalAuthor is for authors who have finished their book in English, and now want to go global!

GlobalAuthor comes in three tiers: Standard, Pro, and Max, described below.

All tiers include creating a course with CourseAI, translating your book into all 31 languages supported by TranslateAI, and a 1-month Shelf Spot.

GlobalAuthor Pro also includes Publish on Amazon and upgrades you to CourseAI Pro with up to 3 hours of video interviews with Len Epp.

GlobalAuthor Max adds IndexAI and AccessibilityPro — the ultimate package for authors who want everything.

Note that Publish on Amazon is in English only for both GlobalAuthor Pro and GlobalAuthor Max.

Every GlobalAuthor package is designed to deliver more value than buying the services separately. Here's how each tier stacks up...

GlobalAuthor Standard ($1,999) includes TranslateAI into all 31 languages ($2,449 value at $79/language), CourseAI Standard ($499 value), and a 1-month Shelf Spot ($179 value). That's $3,127 of value for $1,999.

GlobalAuthor Pro ($3,999) includes everything in Standard plus Publish on Amazon ($1,999 value) and upgrades you to CourseAI Pro ($1,999 value) with human review of your course material plus up to 3 hours of video interviews with Leanpub co-founder Len Epp. That's $6,626 of value for $3,999. This is our recommended package for most authors.

GlobalAuthor Max ($4,999) includes everything in Pro plus IndexAI ($1,499 value) and AccessibilityPro ($1,499 value). That's $9,624 of value for $4,999. IndexAI and AccessibilityPro are not available for individual purchase — you can only get them through GlobalAuthor Max.

All three GlobalAuthor tiers are genuinely good deals — Pro is exceptional value if you want Publish on Amazon, and Max is the ultimate package for authors who want everything.

GlobalAuthor works with books which are in Markua or Leanpub Flavoured Markdown (in any writing mode).

If your book is in Leanpub Flavoured Markdown or Markua 0.10, we will convert it to Markua 0.31 as part of the service.

The reason why we do this is that by default we add an index to your book, and Markua 0.31 is the only dialect of Markdown which supports index entries.

Markua 0.31 is the most powerful and flexible dialect of Markdown, and it is the best way to write books on Leanpub.

If your book is in Word, EPUB or PDF, you will need to convert it to Markua first. We can give you a custom quote on this if you need help with the conversion. The best thing to do if this describes your situation is to book a Zoom call on our Calendly page to discuss how GlobalAuthor would fit with one or more of your books!

IndexAI is our AI service where we use AI to create the index for your book. (If you're under 25 years old: printed books typically have an index at the back of book, which lists all the important topics in the book, and the page numbers where they can be found. You can think of it as a bunch of links you can't click on.) Having an index is a sign of a professional-quality book, and it makes your book more useful to readers.

After we create and review the index, you can optionally review it and request or make changes, before we proceed. (The way indexes are created is that index entries are added inline in your manuscript, per the Markua spec.)

Since we create the index first, the index will be in your Amazon book, and translated in all your Leanpub translations.

IndexAI cannot be purchased separately. IndexAI and AccessibilityPro can occasionally cause rare issues when your book is translated into 31 languages, and we resolve those issues manually with human QA. Because of this hands-on work, the only way we sell IndexAI and AccessibilityPro is as part of GlobalAuthor Max.

AccessibilityPro is our newest "AI plus human work" service. First, we use AI to add alt text to all your images for accessibility purposes. Next, we do manual work to ensure that the EPUB we generate is accessible, and that it passes the Ace by DAISY accessibility checker with no reported issues.

Since we do this before any translations, the alt text is also translated in all your translations.

AccessibilityPro cannot be purchased separately; it can only be purchased as part of GlobalAuthor Max.

The GlobalAuthor service typically takes about 3 weeks to complete. The time varies based on how many other authors are in the queue, etc.

We will keep you updated on our progress throughout the process, and we will either deliver the finished product or give you a progress update within three weeks. We will also be in communication throughout the process via email, and we can have review meetings over Zoom as needed, if you wish.

We built GlobalAuthor because we want to help our authors reach readers around the world, in their own language, on Leanpub and on Amazon.

With Global Author Max, we help you reach readers on Amazon as well — your English edition plus 14 translations.

With all GlobalAuthor packages, Leanpub will translate your book using TranslateAI from English into 31 languages, which combined are read by billions of people.

Just because many people in the world can read English as a second language to some extent doesn't mean they should have to read your book that way.

Furthermore, billions of people cannot read English, even as a second language. If you want to reach some of these people, you need to translate your book into their language. First and foremost, this is a question of accessibility. If readers cannot read your book, it does not matter how good it is.

If you've finished your book and want to make it available to a global audience, the GlobalAuthor service is the next step to take.

Yes. You earn the normal Leanpub royalties on all purchases of GlobalAuthor translations (80% on purchases that are $7.99 and up; 80% minus 50 cents on purchases below $7.99), just like if you purchased those translations individually with TranslateAI. This is the same royalty rate that authors earn from any other Leanpub book.

We add a TranslateAI coauthor to the translations to indicate that this was an AI translation, but this coauthor does not earn any royalties. After all, what would an AI spend the money on?

Yes. You own your translations, both those purchased individually with TranslateAI, or as part of a GlobalAuthor bundle.

You can sell your translations anywhere that allows AI translations to be sold as ebooks or print books. (This currently includes Amazon KDP, but we obviously don't control Amazon's policies about AI translations.)

You do not need to give Leanpub any of your money from sales on other platforms, either of your translation or your original book. You own your work, and you own your AI translations too.

The translations are completely separate Leanpub books, which will be created in Plain Text Editor mode. You can edit them, etc. These are your books.

If you're not happy with the results, or if your book is not a good fit for the service, we'll fully refund your money.

Yes, our 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee applies here, just like it does with all Leanpub purchases!

You can only find out how good the service is by trying it, and because of our 100% money back guarantee there's literally no risk to do so! So, there's no reason not to try the service, is there?

Our strong belief is that trying to compete with AI giants such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, etc. on pure translation quality is something that may result in better performance in the short term, but in the long term the correct strategy is to just build the best tooling around the LLM, and drop in the best-performing model at any given time.

The AI giants are investing billions of dollars on their new models, so our bet is the best general-purpose AI models will outperform single-purpose models on translation. So, we are focused on building the best tooling around the LLM itself, and we are committed to testing and using the best models available at any given moment.

"Commoditize your complements" has been good strategy for the past 23 years, after all!

So, from a strategic perspective, Leanpub's AI services can be viewed as the ultimate "GPT wrapper" publishing startup (even though we're actually wrapping Claude more than GPT at the moment). Instead, since 2010 we've been working hard to build the best plain-text based publishing workflow. And since AI models work great with plain text, this happens to be very fortunate for us!