I’ve been publishing drafts of my book with Leanpub since August 2015, shortly after I first heard about them from Katrin Becker. I took the chance with an unknown publisher largely because it cost me nothing, they took no rights to the book, and their e-book store had very generous royalties.
About a year ago, they changed their pricing model for authors, so that there was a flat $99 fee for starting each new book, though existing books like mine were grandfathered in with no fee.
They just announced to authors another change in their pricing plan (though again, existing books are grandfathered in). Now authors have a choice between a $99 flat fee per book or subscription plans of $8, $19, $29, or $59 a month, depending on how many books they have—the $8/month plan is for up to 3 books. For the 32 months I’ve been with LeanPub, the new subscription pricing scheme would have cost me $256—much more than the $99 flat fee, which would have already been high enough for me to look elsewhere when I was starting.
The new subscription pricing scheme strikes me as a sucker’s deal, if you are really going to stick with a book long enough to complete the book and sell it. Unless you remove a book from Leanpub quickly (taking it to a traditional publisher, for example), the subscription fees add up fast. Unless you are churning out books and moving them off Leanpub within 2–3 years, the $99 flat fee per book remains a better deal.
number of books |
months until flat fee cheaper |
1 |
13 |
2 |
25 |
3 |
38 |
4 |
21 |
5 |
27 |
6 |
32 |
7 |
37 |
8 |
42 |
9 |
47 |
10 |
53 |
11 |
38 |
12 |
41 |
13 |
45 |
14 |
48 |
15 |
52 |
16 |
55 |
They do have some deals where earning sufficient royalties will provide the subscription for free, but I’m still a long way from the first breakpoint ($1000 in royalties), because I give away the book to students in my classes (235 free copies of the book vs. only 133 paid-for copies) and because I charge so little (the price is now $9.99 recommended, $4.99 minimum). At that low price, my royalties are minimal. I suppose that in another couple of years I’ll be up to the level that would unlock their standard plan, allowing me to do up to 3 more books without a subscription fee (unless they’ve raised their thresholds by then).
Of course, if I could get some other teacher to adopt my book for a course, my sales would go up substantially, but self-promotion has never been one of strong skills, and Leanpub provides no marketing. Other than the authors of books on Leanpub and their students, no one knows about the website or looks for books there.
Leanpub has also changed the royalties they give, from 90%–50¢ to 80%. For the lowest price they allow ($4.99), the royalties are the same either way, but for higher prices, they now take more (again, existing books are grandfathered in under the old agreement, though they are trying to induce authors to switch to the new royalty scheme with a not-very-exciting promotion scheme). The new royalties are still much better than Amazon’s 35% for ebooks, but Amazon provides much more visibility for books. Amazon does have a 70% royalty deal for ebooks in a very narrow price range.
I understand why Leanpub has been making changes to their business model—their initial pricing was a loss leader, to build up a sufficient clientele while they were developing their software for book publishing. The main value they add (in their view) is their mark-up language for producing EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats from the same source, and most of their development costs have been for improving their mark-up language (first Leanpub-flavored Markdown and now Markua).
But I’m not using their mark-up language, because it is not really suited for the graph-heavy, math-heavy textbook I’m writing. I’m using LaTeX to produce PDF files directly. I gave up on EPUB and MOBI, as they are not suitable formats for graph-heavy books, even though that locks me out of many of the e-book markets. I’m using Leanpub only for their storefront, for which their 10%+50¢ charge was quite reasonable, but increasing the charges to 20% and adding a $8/month subscription fee to that would make me think twice about staying with Leanpub, if they hadn’t grandfathered in the existing books.
2018 June 4: LeanPub has updated their pricing model again. They now do 80% royalties (no grandfathering), but they have a free plan for people doing limited numbers of book updates per month. Overall, it doesn’t affect me much (at the minimum price, the royalties were the same either way). They’ll probably change the pricing again before anyone reads this note.
Like this:
Like Loading...