[{"_1":2,"_48":-5,"_49":-5},"loaderData",{"_3":4,"_10":11,"_46":-5,"_47":-5},"root",{"_5":-5,"_6":-5,"_7":-5,"_8":9},"user","shoppingCartId","toast","locale","en","routes/_store+/_readers+/email_author.$slug/route",{"_12":13,"_45":-5},"book",{"_14":15,"_16":17,"_18":19,"_20":21,"_22":23,"_24":25},"id","Z2lkOi8vbGVhbnB1Yi9TdG9yZTo6Qm9va1Byb2R1Y3QvODY2OQ","title","A Million Lessons","state","published","contactAuthorMethod","email","aboutText","

When Peter Armstrong and Scott Patten founded Leanpub in 2010, they had a clear purpose: to create the best way to write and publish in-progress ebooks.

By “the best”, they didn’t just intend to develop the best toolchain and workflow for authors and publishers. They also intended to actually help authors make money from their writing. Even if you were just a few chapters in, even if your target audience were limited to only a thousand or so other experts in your field, Leanpub was supposed to help you actually get paid for all the work you do, writing and marketing your book.

Recently, Leanpub passed the point where it has helped authors earn more than $1,000,000. This is an important milestone for any bootstrapped startup: for us, it is a proof of concept, validating the Lean Publishing philosophy.

It’s also a big moment for us in another, very special sense. We’ve only reached this milestone because of the feedback we’ve received from our “early adopter” authors. Leanpub was built on the principles of Customer Development, which means that Leanpub authors are not just users. They are also contributors to the development of Leanpub.

So, this book is both a commemoration of an important milestone for a startup, and a tribute to our hard-working (and very smart) authors. It consists of transcriptions from the Lean Publishing Podcast and selected responses to a recent Leanpub author survey. We hope you enjoy reading about our authors’ careers, their interests, and their experiences as pioneers at the frontier of 21st-century publishing.

Peter Armstrong, Scott Patten and Len Epp

December 19, 2013

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