Leanpub

What Leanpub is

Leanpub is a publishing platform and store where independent authors write, publish and sell ebooks and online courses, and where readers, learners and teams buy them. Its motto is "Publish Early. Publish Often.", and its idea of lean publishing is that an author can release a book or course while it is still being written and keep updating it, with buyers getting each update. The store is heavily technical: AI and large language models, software engineering, Kotlin, Python, C++, Rust, Kubernetes, Android and data science, with some business, statistics and organizational titles. Two readers come here: a creator who wants to sell expert material with little setup and a high royalty, and a learner or team who wants up-to-date technical books and courses. The footer names Ruboss Technology Corp as the copyright holder, from 2010.

For authors and course creators

The author pitch is on the home page: "Leanpub makes it easy to create, publish, and sell ebooks or online courses while earning industry-leading royalties." The royalty is 80% on purchases of $7.99 or more, and 80% minus a small $0.50 fee on purchases under $7.99. The page works an example: "a $10 sale brings you $8, and selling 5,000 copies at $20 could mean $80,000 in your pocket". It also states that "Leanpub has already paid out $15,737,462.83 to authors."

Writing can happen in Markdown, or authors can upload finished PDF or EPUB files. Leanpub offers an in-browser editor, or syncs with GitHub or Dropbox, and publishes "with a single click." The author decides when to release, during the writing process or on completion. The author menu covers creating a book, a bundle, a course or a track, and support runs through an author FAQ, a help center, an authors forum, manuals for Leanpub and its Markua markup, and API documentation.

Pricing is flexible for buyers, which matters for how creators earn. The featured titles on the home page each show a suggested price and a lower minimum: the featured book The Agentic Engineer is $29.00 suggested with a $14.99 minimum, the featured course on building production agents with Claude Code is $149 suggested with a $49.00 minimum, and the featured track A Simple Path to Python Success, which includes 7 courses, is $149.99 suggested with a $99.99 minimum. Readers can also use coupon codes from podcasts, talks or authors.

Beyond the platform itself, Leanpub lists a range of author services: AI tools named AudiobookAI, GhostAI, TranslateAI, CourseAI, ImportAI, IndexAI and AccessibilityAI, publishing on Amazon, GlobalAuthor, ghostwriting, book programs called The Expert Book, The Founder Book and The Executive Book, and newsletter sponsorships. The course Microservices Masterclass is credited to David Farley and CourseAI, so the course service is used on live listings.

What courses look like

Courses sit alongside books, bundles and tracks, a track being a group of courses sold together. Several course listings describe their components. The Hundred-Page Language Models Course by Andriy Burkov has six lessons and "nearly three hours of exclusive video interviews with the author", and Patterns of Application Development Using AI by Obie Fernandez also includes video interviews with the author. Practical Kotlin Deep Dive Course has hands-on Code Playgrounds and "158 interactive assessments". The Manifest Android Interview Course offers "over 250 quiz questions, 370 practical and follow-up questions with full answers". Real World Python contains "exercises, explanatory videos, an example solution and a quiz."

Other top courses include Stratospheric, on taking a Spring Boot application to production with AWS, Generative AI in a Nutshell by Henrik Kniberg, and The Kubernetes Course by Nigel Poulton, based on the 2025 edition of his Kubernetes book and "Hand-crafted over the past 8 years". Tracks include an AI Masterclass combining three courses from Kniberg, Fernandez and Burkov, a Kotlin for developers track, and senior Android interview prep tracks.

For readers and teams

Readers can buy titles one at a time, take a Reader Membership, or buy credits, and the store also lets them redeem a coupon or a token. The new Leanpub app, now on the App Store, holds a reader's whole library, works offline, tracks progress with highlights and notes, delivers free updates with one tap, and lets Reader Members buy books with credits. Leanpub notes that it is a completely rewritten app and that most App Store reviews refer to the old app retired in 2019.

For organizations, Leanpub Organization Memberships "Give your team access to thousands of books and courses on Leanpub", with "Book credits, course credits, and Free With Membership access for your team." The selling point is freshness: "Because Leanpub authors publish updates with one click, our AI, software, and business titles stay more current than print". That makes Leanpub usable as a training library for a technical team as well as a store for individuals.

Community and events

Leanpub runs a podcast in which co-founder Len Epp interviews authors; the featured episode was number 336. Every Leanpub author can apply to record a free book launch video with him. The events menu lists a Book Workshop and a Book Weekend, and the home page advertised a free 90-minute live event on Zoom with founder Peter Armstrong. Essays on the site include The Lean Publishing Manifesto from 2010 and Leanpub at Sixteen from 2026.

What authors say

The testimonials come from established technical authors. Roger D. Peng, Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says Leanpub "lets me write and get my ideas out there quickly." Manuel Kiessling, author of The Node Beginner Book, writes: "Today, over 28,000 book sales later, I cannot help but say that I'm the biggest Leanpub fan on this planet!" Phil Sturgeon credits it with helping him "gauge interest in my book, get payments early on when it was only a few chapters". Jeff Geerling, author of Ansible for DevOps, points out that the first person who bought his book for $9.99, with only a preface and two short chapters, went on to get almost two years of updates. Aaron Sumner says he went "from first draft to first sale in days, not months or years." Taylor Otwell, creator of Laravel, likes that he "can write my book using simple Markdown notation." Karen Greaves of Growing Agile says the ability to "release updates continually helps with the mindset of getting a minimum version out ASAP and then iterating to improve." Johanna Rothman, listed as the author of 8 Leanpub books, values being able to "find readers early, to read my books and offer suggestions."

Memberships, support and policies

Leanpub sorts its plans by who is buying. Authors have Author Memberships, organizations can choose Organization Memberships or Publisher Memberships, and readers have Reader Memberships. Readers get their own FAQ and help center, separate from the author support pages, and Leanpub publishes a refund policy, a copyright policy and fraud warnings, along with a partner program and a Causes program. The home page explains how royalties are calculated but not how often they are paid out.

Who it suits

Leanpub suits technical experts, academics and consultants who want to sell an ebook or a text-and-video course to a developer audience, keep 80% of each sale at $7.99 or more, and publish before the work is finished. Authors who already write in Markdown or keep their manuscript in GitHub fit the workflow especially well. Learners get practical courses with quizzes, playgrounds or author interviews and free updates, and teams can buy an organization membership to keep engineers on current material. The caveat is the format: Leanpub presents courses as products in its own store, next to books, bundles and tracks, so a creator who wants a branded academy under their own name is buying into a different model.