LeanPod · Private beta

You interview the best in the world. Where’s the book?

LeanPod turns a podcast of long conversations into two books: one faithful to every word as it was spoken, and one edited to read the way the conversation felt. We spent months obsessing over the workflow that makes them, on a real podcast book, one conversation at a time. So the months went into the workflow, not into your wait.

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Private beta. Hand us the files and both editions come back within 72 hours, privately, with zero human editing and no commitment.

A LeanPod book

In Their Own Words

Your name on the spine

The service

Are you an interviewer?

Do you sit across from the founders, the investors, the artists, the scientists, the athletes, the people who actually built something, and get them to say how they did it? Then you have already done the hard part. You earned the trust. You asked the question nobody else asked. You let the silence work.

Everything we know about Rockefeller, Edwin Land, Enzo Ferrari and Steve Jobs, we know because somebody wrote it down. The letters, the interviews, the dictated memoirs. The biographies you love were built from primary sources, and most of those sources were conversations. You are recording the primary sources of the next century. Right now they live in a feed, where episode 40 is buried under episode 400.

A podcast is heard once. A book is read for fifty years.

The shelf

You already know what this book feels like

If you have read Founders at Work, you know the attraction. Jessica Livingston sat down with the people who started Apple, PayPal, Hotmail and Craigslist and asked them what it was actually like. The book is nearly twenty years old and it is still pressed into the hands of first-time founders, because nothing beats the person who did it, telling you in their own words.

The Paris Review has been publishing its interviews with writers since 1953. Studs Terkel’s Working is nothing but people talking. Charlie Munger’s talks became Poor Charlie’s Almanack, a book that has now outlived him. A conversation, edited with care and bound between covers, is one of the oldest and most durable things a person can make.

Your show is already that book. It is just trapped in audio.

The problem

A transcript is not a book

You have seen the transcript. Every “yeah, yeah”, every restart, every sentence that begins twice and ends nowhere. It is accurate, and it is unreadable. Nobody has ever given a transcript as a gift.

A machine can produce one in thirty seconds, and that is exactly what it is worth. It is disposable, like the feed it came from.

A book is different. Each conversation becomes a chapter with a title that earns its place. A standfirst tells the reader who this person is and why the conversation matters. The false starts go, the crosstalk is untangled, and the moment where your guest finally says the true thing lands on the page the way it landed in the room. The reader gets the conversation as you remember it, not as the microphone recorded it.

The two editions

Two books, not one

Every host wants two things that pull against each other: the words exactly as they were said, and a book that reads. So we make both, and we hand you both.

The faithful edition. Only slightly more edited than a cleaned-up transcript. Made from the audio, then trimmed only where the ear forgives and the eye does not: false starts, filler, a sentence begun twice. Nothing rephrased. Nothing reordered. Nothing cut for being boring. Each conversation still gets a chapter title and a standfirst, because it is a book, not a transcript. If you ever need to know what was actually said, this is the record.

The edited edition. The same conversations, the same titles and standfirsts, edited to be the best book rather than to preserve every word. It can cut up to 10% of what was said: the crosstalk, the repetition, the digression that went nowhere. Every cut is checked back against the audio, and nothing is rephrased.

Both are faithful to the conversation, in different ways. Which you prefer is a matter of taste: do you want maximum fidelity, still with more polish than a transcript, or do you want the tightest book?

Both are made by the AI workflow we spent months building and testing, and both come back within 72 hours of the files landing, with zero human editing. You get both, privately, for your review only. Read them side by side. Then decide whether you want human hands on it, yours or ours, or none at all.

How it works

What we actually do

We spent the months so you only wait three days. We built and tested this workflow on the first podcast book we made: thirty-eight conversations, 320,000 words, six full passes, arguing over every changed word until the process was right. Across all of that, exactly one spoken word changed, in a sentence that had no meaning as transcribed. Everything else we touched was ours: a hyphen, a capital letter, the title of a cited book. Your show gets the finished workflow.
You hand us the files. Audio or video, any format, in a shared folder. The whole show, or the episodes you would put in a first volume.
We make the faithful edition. Only slightly more edited than a cleaned-up transcript: trimmed where the ear forgives and the eye does not, nothing rephrased, nothing reordered, nothing cut for being boring. Every line checked against the recording. Each conversation gets a chapter title and a standfirst that says who this is and why it matters.
We make the edited edition. The same chapters, titles and standfirsts, edited for the best book rather than for every word. It can cut up to 10% of what was said: the crosstalk, the repetition, the digressions. Every cut checked back against the audio, nothing rephrased.
We repair the transcription. We never correct the speaker. This is the rule both editions follow, and it is built into the workflow. If the recording says one thing and the page says another, we fix the page. If your guest misremembered a date, or chose a word you would not have chosen, it stays. We put nothing in anyone’s mouth. What the edited edition cuts, it cuts whole; it never changes what a sentence means.
We typeset both properly. PDF, EPUB, and a print-ready edition for paperback and hardcover. The kind of object you can sign.
We hand both back within 72 hours. Zero human editing. Privately, for your review only. No commitment, no pressure, nobody waiting on you.
Then, if you want them, the humans. Read both. If you like what you see, we work out the next step together: you publish it as it is, you edit it yourself, or we edit it by hand. The first two are free, and they are the ones we are rooting for. You own everything, and you have zero obligation to us here. Of course, we’d love for you to publish it on Leanpub.

Both editions are made by AI, start to finish, but the AI workflow was built with human obsession. People spent months testing it against real conversations, ruling on every kind of change it is allowed to make and every kind it is not, until it did what a careful editor does and nothing a careful editor would not. The tool is sharp because multiple people spent a long time sharpening it.

What's included

What stays yours

Your name on the cover, and your copyright on the page behind it.
Your guests’ words, exactly as spoken. We repair transcription, never testimony.
Every editorial call. Which episodes, what order, whether guests see their chapters first, whether the conversations are dated. We will advise if you ask. We will not decide.
Your price, and 80% of it. Sell on Leanpub from day one at Leanpub’s standard royalty, and in print through Amazon when you are ready.
Both editions, privately. Nobody outside the room sees a page until you say so.
Your choice of editor. Us, you, or nobody. Decided after you have read both editions, not before.
Your podcast, untouched. The book is a companion, not a replacement. Every chapter can point back to the episode it came from.

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The beta

Who the beta is for

We are taking a small number of shows into the beta, and we choose them the way you would choose a book: by how badly we want to read it.

You interview people worth reading twice.
You have a body of work. Dozens of long conversations, not a handful of short ones.
You care what your name looks like on a spine.

It is not for you if a transcript is all you want. There are excellent tools for that, and we are not one of them.

Your part

What we need from you

You have already done the years of work. What is left is small, and it is yours alone to do.

Task	Your time
A Zoom call to start it	30 minutes
The audio or video, for every episode you want in the book	A shared folder
Choosing which episodes to send	Minutes
A read of both editions, with your notes in the margins	A few evenings, at your pace
A yes, a no, or a not yet	Whenever you are ready

Our side of it
We are creating this for your eyes only. Do what you want with it. It’s yours.

Frequently asked questions

Questions you should be asking

Is this just an AI transcript with a cover on it?

It is AI, and it is not a transcript. A transcript takes thirty seconds and reads like one. These take 72 hours because the workflow does what an editor does: repairs what the microphone got wrong, trims what the eye should not have to wade through, shapes chapters, writes standfirsts, and checks every change back against the audio. The AI runs that workflow. People spent months building and testing it on a real podcast book, ruling on every kind of change it is allowed to make and every kind it is not. What we hand back has had zero human editing.

Will my guests sound like themselves?

Yes, because they are themselves. We remove what a microphone catches and a reader should not have to wade through: false starts, filler, crosstalk. We never rephrase what a person said, and we never correct them. If a guest got a fact wrong, the page has them getting it wrong, because that is what happened. If you want a footnote, you can have one. That is your call, not ours.

Do my guests need to approve their chapters?

That is your decision, and we will not push you either way. Some hosts send chapters to guests as a courtesy. Some do not. We will support whichever you choose.

Which episodes go in?

The ones you send. Send the whole show and we make the whole book. Send ten episodes and we make a first volume. Most shows have a natural one: the conversations you still think about. The table of contents is yours to change afterwards, and we will help if you ask.

How long does it take?

72 hours from the files landing to both editions in your inbox. If you then want human editing, that is months, not minutes, and we will tell you a real date before we start. We would rather be slow than sloppy on that part, and we suspect you would rather that too.

What happens after the 72 hours?

Three doors, and you pick one after you have read both editions, not before. You publish it as it is. You edit it yourself: it is already a Leanpub book, so open it and start. Or we edit it by hand: months, a real date, and a fee we agree on first. The first two doors are free. The whole service, both editions, typeset, yours, for nothing. And they are the doors we are hoping you take. We are doing this so the book exists, not to sell you human editing. There is also the door marked nothing, and it is a perfectly good door.

What does it cost?

Nothing. Both editions, typeset, sent to you privately, free. If you publish as it is, or edit it yourself on Leanpub, it stays free, and that is the outcome we are hoping for. The only door with a price on it is asking us to edit by hand, and we agree that fee before we start. If you want none of it, nothing happens.

What if I read them and want neither one published?

Then nothing happens. The editions were made for your eyes, and they stay that way. Nobody outside the room ever sees a page. We would still be glad we made them.

Can I use the book to promote the show?

It is your book. Excerpt it, give chapters to your guests, sell it, sign copies at your live show, hand it to the next guest before they sit down. Every chapter can carry a link back to the episode it came from.

I only have video. Does that work?

Video is fine. We only need the sound. Send whatever you have, in whatever format, and we will sort it out.

It starts with a half-hour call

If you host the kind of show this page describes, we are already fans, and we would love to do this. Book a half-hour Zoom call with us: we talk about the show, which conversations belong in a first volume, and how to get us the files. Both editions come back within 72 hours of the files landing, privately, with zero human editing. Your review only. No commitment, no pressure.

Book a half-hour call

Or just write to hello@leanpub.com.