Reach a Global Audience

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

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

GlobalAuthor Standard and Pro include creating a course with CourseAI, translating your book into the 12 core GlobalAuthor languages — Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Spanish, and Turkish — and a 1-month Shelf Spot.

GlobalAuthor Standard is fully automated: your translations and your course start the moment you purchase, and your Shelf Spot goes live right away.

GlobalAuthor Pro adds Publish on Amazon for your English book and upgrades you to CourseAI Pro, with full human editing and QA.

GlobalAuthor Max upgrades you to CourseAI Max, with up to 3 hours of video interviews with Len Epp. We also upgrade your translations to all 31 languages supported by TranslateAI, and add IndexAI and AccessibilityAI, also translated into all 31 languages. We also make marketing clips from your interview videos.

GlobalAuthor Ultra is our white-glove flagship: everything in Max, plus we publish 14 of your 31 translations on Amazon (39 editions in total), and create custom cover pages for all 31 translations.

Want more languages on Standard or Pro? You can add any of the other 19 whenever you like with TranslateAI, at $49 per language. (Max and Ultra already include all 31.)

Note that Publish on Amazon is in English only for GlobalAuthor Standard, Pro and Max. GlobalAuthor Ultra also includes publishing 14 of your 31 translations on Amazon.

If you are just getting started on your book or need some help getting unstuck, consider our Book Bootcamp, which includes enough of a service credit to get GlobalAuthor Pro for FREE once you're done your book!

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

GlobalAuthor Standard ($499) includes TranslateAI into the 12 core GlobalAuthor languages ($588 value at $49/language), CourseAI Standard ($99 value), and a 1-month Shelf Spot ($179 value). That's $866 of value for $499 — less than the translations cost on their own — and it's fully automated: everything starts the moment you purchase.

GlobalAuthor Pro ($1,499) includes everything in Standard plus Publish on Amazon ($999 value) and upgrades you to CourseAI Pro ($499 value) with full human editing and QA. That's $2,265 of value for $1,499. This is our recommended package for most authors.

GlobalAuthor Max ($2,499) includes everything in Pro, upgrades you to CourseAI Max ($999 value) with up to 3 hours of video interviews with Leanpub co-founder Len Epp, upgrades your translations to all 31 languages ($1,519 value), and adds IndexAI ($49 value) and AccessibilityAI ($49 value), translated into all 31 languages. That's $3,794 of value for $2,499.

GlobalAuthor Ultra ($7,499) is our white-glove flagship. It includes everything in Max, plus Publish on Amazon for 14 of your 31 translations ($13,986 value at $999 per book), custom cover pages for all 31 translations ($999 value), and marketing clips from your interview videos. That's $18,779 of value for $7,499 — for authors who want us to do absolutely everything, everywhere.

All four GlobalAuthor tiers are genuinely good deals — Standard is the fully-automated entry point, Pro is exceptional value if you want Publish on Amazon, Max is the complete package, and Ultra is the white-glove flagship for authors who want us to do absolutely 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 and AccessibilityAI are also available separately ($49 each). As part of GlobalAuthor Max and Ultra they're included, translated into every language in your package, and any rare cross-language issues are resolved manually with human QA.

AccessibilityAI is our "AI plus human work" accessibility 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.

AccessibilityAI is also available on its own for $49 (the fully-automated AI alt text, without the manual EPUB QA). As part of GlobalAuthor Max and Ultra, it includes the manual QA, and the alt text is translated into every language in your package.

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 GlobalAuthor Max, we help you reach readers on Amazon as well with your English edition — and with GlobalAuthor Ultra, 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 Source 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 "LLM wrapper" publishing startup. 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!