Episodes

Christoph Molnar is the author of the Leanpub book Interpretable Machine Learning: A Guide for Making Black Box Models Explainable. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Christoph about his background, what it takes to work on a Ph.D., his book and interpretability, as well as machine learning generally, some dystopian possibilities for the future, a...

Jay Hoffmann is the author of the Leanpub book The History of the Web, Volume I. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Jay about his background and career, starting and maintaining a popular newsletter, his book, the history of the web, the challenges the web presents to historians, some of the more interesting stories that he's researched, and at the end, they talk a littl...

Nathan Bransford is a freelance editor and media strategy consultant, an author, and a former literary agent for Curtis Brown. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Nathan about his background, studying English at Stanford during the dot com boom, work as a literary agent, getting published, and current issues facing the book publishing industry.

This interview was recorded on January 9, 2019.

This interview has been edited ...

Sandy Maguire is the author of the Leanpub book Thinking with Types: Type-Level Programming in Haskell. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Sandy about his background, working at Facebook and Google, retiring at a young age and travelling, Haskell, his book, and at the end, they talk a little bit about his experience as a self-published author.

This int...

Brad Sams is the author of the Leanpub book Beneath A Surface: The Story of How Microsoft Overcame a $900 Million Write-Down to Become the Hero of the PC Industry. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Brad about his background, his work for the Blue Whale Web Media Group, being a tech journalist, the tricky business of handling leaks and anonymous sources, his book, and th...

David Vandagriff is known by people in the publishing industry as Passive Guy, his persona on his popular publishing industry blog, The Passive Voice.

In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with David about his background, how he got into the law after studying speech and literature, his early innovations with desktop publishing in the preparation of legal documents, his work in advertising and how he got into the tech wo...

Michael T. Lombardi is the author of the Leanpub course pwshop: A PowerShell 101 Workshop. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Mike about his background in tech, restorative justice and workplace conduct, what PowerShell is, the success of the PowerShell Conference Book in raising money for a scholar...

Orna Ross is an award-winning author and poet who founded the popular Alliance of Independent Authors, an influential professional association for self-published authors.

In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Orna about her background in publishing, the changing roles of literary agents, getting her rights back from a big publisher, the huge transformation in the self-publishing in the recent past, Self-P...

Guerric de Ternay is the author of the Leanpub book The Value Mix: Create meaningful products and services for your audience. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Guerric about his background, how studying law can help you in business, launching fashion brands, the profound ways marketing has changed in the last century, the unique insights he offers to marketers and product-bu...

In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Associate Professor Rebecca Giblin about her background, her e-lending and Author's Interest projects, DRM and creator compensation, the potential role unfair competition law could play in regulating dominant companies, and author compensation in relation the economics of library ebook lending and the book industry generally.

This interview was recorded on September 18, 2018.

The full audio for the interview is ...

In this special episode of the Leanpub Frontmatter podcast, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp interviews Don Tapscott, Chancellor of Trent University, for the Chancellor's Lecture series.

The interview was recorded before a live audience on November 16, 2018.

Don Tapscott is one of the leading authorities in the world on the way technology c...

Zsolt Nagy is the author of the Leanpub book The Charismatic Coder: The Software Developer's Guide to Social Confidence and Emotional Freedom.

In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Zsolt about his background, growing up in Hungary, Jordan Peterson and the importance of the "gotcha moment," online poker and AI, professional development tactics like how to ask fo...

Bill Kasdorf is a partner at the consultancy Publishing Technology Partners, where he provides guidance and insight regarding the publishing industry. He has worked with many well-known companies and institutions, from the scholarly press at Harvard, to the World Bank and the British Library, amongst many others.

In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Bill about his background and how he got interested in the worl...

Chris Fidao is the author of the Leanpub book Servers for Hackers: Server Administration for Programmers. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Chris about his background, how he got into programming, his entry into the world of books and screencasts and independently creating "info products," and at the end, they talk a little bit about his experience as a self-publis...

Sam Halliday is the author of the Leanpub book Functional Programming for Mortals with Scalaz. In this Q&A, which was conducted over email, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Sam about his background, his work, an amazing project to create educational materials in South Africa, the truth about what he thinks about open source, his book, and at the end, they talk a little bit about his experi...

Paul Redmond is the author of the Leanpub book Docker for PHP Developers: A guide to using Docker for PHP development. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Paul about his background, his work for Laravel News and his Bitpress project, his process for writing books, what it's like having a self-published book picked up by a conventional publisher, his book, a...

W. Jason Gilmore is the author of the Leanpub book Easy Laravel 5: A Hands On Introduction Using a Real-World Project. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Jason about some of his favorite projects from the past few years, including the creation of a system for predicting what books a publisher should be publishing, and a couple of really cool services built using the Larav...

Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a bestselling and award-winning author who also writes a very popular blog on the business side of book publishing, which is an invaluable resource for authors in all genres.

In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Kristine about her background as a writer, journalism and politics in the US, the impact of war on the mail-order book business in the US in the ea...

Taylor Otwell is the creator and maintainer of the popular Laravel PHP framework and the author of the Leanpub book Laravel: From Apprentice To Artisan.

In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Taylor about changes to Laravel and developments in the Laravel community since their ...

Mark Graban is the author of the Leanpub book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Mark about how he has widened the scope of his work from healthcare to large organizations generally, how a bad system can lead good people to do bad things, how to view a chart as "the voice of a process," overreacting to dat...

Nate Dickson is the author of the Leanpub book Painless Git: A Sane Person's Guide to Distributed Development. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Nate about his background, a little about politics and religion, working on Mormon websites and the sophisticated online outreach of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, what it's like doing an MBA as a writer and...

Todd Sattersten is the author of the Leanpub book Every Book Is A Startup: How Authors Uncover Felt Need, Hack Growth, and Build Bestsellers. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Todd about his background in engineering and publishing, how he works with authors, and why he thinks every book is a startup.

This interview was recorded on May 25, 2018....

Carla King is an author and founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp series. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Carla about her background as a writer, how she got into motorcycles and travelling solo, the impact of 9/11 on travel writing and publishing in the United States, why every self-published author should set up their own company, and more.

This interview was recorded on May 24, 2018.

The full audio for the...

Jutta Eckstein is the author of the Leanpub book Author of Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy: Survive & Thrive on Disruption. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Jutta about her background in tech, how pair programming works, "consent decision making," "Beyond Budgeting," her books, and at the end, they talk a little bit about he...

Eberhard Wolff is the author of the Leanpub book Microservices - A Practical Guide: Principles, Concepts, and Recipes. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Eberhard about his background in tech, working a big company versus freelance and consulting work, getting political on Twitter, when you should use microservices in your software and why, his book, and at the e...

Ben Linders is the author of the Leanpub book What Drives Quality: A Deep Dive into Software Quality with Practical Solutions for Delivering High-Quality Products -- Second Edition. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Ben about his background, Agile and building quality software, what it's like to write a book with someone you've never met in person, his books, and ...

Simon Ellis is the author of the Leanpub book Some Things About Dance. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Simon about his path from sports to dance, choreography and the way it affects all of our lives, from getting into and out of elevators to national policy, his book, and at the end, they talk a little bit about his experience as a self-published author.

Zach Tellman is the author of the Leanpub book Elements of Clojure. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Zach about his background, the impact of the development of the first computers in a physics-oriented environment and the place of the computer in intellectual history, his book, and at the end, they talk a little bit about his experience as a self-published author....

Marie Force is a New York Times bestselling author of romance fiction whose books have sold over seven million copies worldwide. In this interview, Marie talks about her interesting journey to life as a successful author, building a business around successful indie publishing, and about the Indie Author Support Network initiative, an organization devoted to advocating for the rights and interests of indie authors.

This interview was recorded on May 17, 2018.

The full audio fo...

Gregor Hohpe is the author of the Leanpub book 37 Things One Architect Knows About IT Transformation: A Chief Architect's Journey. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Gregor about his background, his education in Germany, his time at Stanford, the impact of our current political moment on the tech sector, what it's like working at Google, why insurance is interesting, his book, ...