Research · leanpub · team/conductor/research/leanpub/04-what-the-best-leanpub-books-do.md
What the best Leanpub books do
Researcher: sub-agent for the conductor. All pages read on 30 October 2026 unless a row says otherwise.
How this was done, and its limits
- Method: the Leanpub lifetime bestseller list and each book page were fetched directly (curl through the proxy). The list URL is https://leanpub.com/store/books?sort=bestsellers_lifetime . Author posts were fetched where they were reachable; a few facts come only from search summaries and are marked "search summary only".
- The list returned about 20 titles in the Programming & Technical category (the default view). Leanpub does not show the sales or revenue behind the order, and the page-two and page-three URLs I tried returned no further books. So this is the top of one category's lifetime list, not a proven overall top 20. I could not see lifetime lists for other categories.
- Readers counts are what the book page shows. On Leanpub a "reader" includes people who took the book for free, so a reader count is not a sales count. Sales are never shown. Where a page shows no count I write "not shown".
- Books on the list I did not profile: a Japanese-language Rails testing book (Aaron Sumner and Junichi Ito), "Exploratory Data Analysis with R" (Roger D. Peng), and the "CCIE Service Provider v4" guide (Nicholas Russo, 929 readers). I could not see covers (the fetch returns text only), so cover design is not assessed.
- No fetched page tried to give me instructions.
1. Platform facts that shape every row
| Fact | Source |
|---|---|
| Authors set a minimum and a suggested price; the reader picks a price between them (and may pay above the suggestion) | https://leanpub.com/ansible-for-devops (page shows "Pick your price", Minimum and Suggested) |
| "All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid" | text on https://leanpub.com/datastyle and https://leanpub.com/os |
| A free minimum is allowed and common among the biggest books (see table) | the book pages below |
| Authors can sell packages (book alone, book plus datasets and code, book plus lecture videos) and bundles of several books | https://leanpub.com/rprogramming ; https://leanpub.com/ansible-for-devops |
| Every page offers a free sample (PDF/EPUB), a table of contents, page and word counts, and a reader count | https://leanpub.com/ansible-for-devops |
| A Reader Membership lets a member take a book for 1 "book credit" (a credit is worth $25) and about 2,000 books are free with membership | https://leanpub.com/leanpub_at_sixteen (2026) |
| Leanpub says it pays 80% royalties and keeps about $3 of a $20 sale | https://leanpub.com/the_most_painful_compliment (2026) |
| Leanpub's own account of its growth: an "organic flywheel" from readers to authors, now adding paid events, bootcamps and ads | https://leanpub.com/leanpub_at_sixteen ; https://leanpub.com/the_most_painful_compliment |
| Bestseller lists rank by revenue and copies in the past seven days, or by lifetime revenue and copies | https://help.leanpub.com/en/articles/5395545-how-are-books-ranked-in-leanpub-s-bestseller-lists (search summary only) |
2. The books (twelve, from the lifetime list)
Ordered by readers count shown, highest first; "n/s" is "not shown". Every row's source is the book's own page unless stated.
| # | Book, author, URL | Topic | Readers | Price model | State and last update | How the page sells | Author's strategy outside Leanpub |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | OpenIntro Statistics, David Diez, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel, Christopher Barr and OpenIntro. https://leanpub.com/os | College statistics textbook | 544,007 | Minimum free, suggested $15. Packages: the book, and the book plus tablet-friendly and past editions (1st to 4th), both free. Also 1 credit with membership | 100% complete; updated 2024-12-30; 422 pages | Argues against "expensive alternatives": free before the course starts, free forever including future editions, Amazon paperback at $25; claims about 20,000 students a year; says Leanpub revenue funds a US non-profit; sample download; page for teachers | Non-profit with its own site (openintro.org) carrying free videos, labs, teacher registration and free desk copies; print on Amazon |
| 2 | Introduction to Data Science, Rafael A. Irizarry. https://leanpub.com/datasciencebook | R, data wrangling, machine learning | 195,514 | Minimum free, suggested $49.99; PDF; 1 translation (Spanish) | n/s | Long, concrete blurb of skills covered (R, dplyr, ggplot2, Git, knitr); full table of contents; author bio (Harvard professor) | Academic with a university audience; page links a podcast episode (no other detail on the page) |
| 3 | The Elements of Data Analytic Style, Jeff Leek. https://leanpub.com/datastyle | Data analysis practice | 136,067 | Minimum free, suggested $10; 31 translations | n/s | Short; says it grew from the author's blog posts and tutorials; credits his co-direction of the Johns Hopkins Data Science Specialization, which "has enrolled more than 1.76 million people" | Blog (Simply Statistics), a very large online course; the book is a companion to the course |
| 4 | Ansible for DevOps, Jeff Geerling. https://leanpub.com/ansible-for-devops | Server automation | 115,385 | Minimum and suggested both $9.99 (no discount below, no ask above). Bundles: Vagrant Ansible $26.99, Ansible Bundle $29.97, Automated Servers $44.99. Also 1 credit | 100% complete; updated 2025-05-25; 470 pages, 91,580 words | Subtitle "Server and configuration management for humans"; "tested with the latest version"; full table of contents and sample; podcast episode | His own post of 19 Oct 2015 (https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2015/finished-writing-my-first-book/) says almost two years of writing, "publishing-as-I-write", over 2,200 copies sold on Leanpub before the first edition, then Amazon and iTunes. Leanpub's help page cites him as a typical Lean Publishing success (search summary only) |
| 5 | The Node Beginner Book, Manuel Kiessling. https://leanpub.com/nodebeginner | Node.js tutorial | 30,821 | $7.99 minimum and suggested; bundle "Javascript on Server Side" $11.99 | 100% complete; updated 2018-11-13; 85 pages, 20,674 words | Almost no blurb ("No Description Available" on the list); sells on being short, cheap and a clear title | n/s on the page. A Leanpub testimonial attributed to the author says "over 28,000" sales after four years (search summary of https://leanpub.com/testimonials ; unchecked) |
| 6 | Software Architecture for Developers, Simon Brown. https://leanpub.com/software-architecture-for-developers | Architecture | 27,883 | Minimum $20, suggested $25; 1 credit | 100% complete; updated 2022-05-28; 106 pages | Subtitle "Technical leadership and the balance with agility"; sample and table of contents; page count shown | n/s on the page |
| 7 | Introducing EventStorming, Alberto Brandolini. https://leanpub.com/introducing_eventstorming | A workshop method | 12,327 | Minimum $9.99, suggested $19.99 | 70% complete; updated 2021-08-26; 416 pages; author's note: "still in progress, after all these years" | "Straight from the inventor"; the author is the source of the method | n/s on the page |
| 8 | The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book, Andriy Burkov. https://leanpub.com/theMLbook | Machine learning | n/s | Minimum $20, suggested $40 | 100% complete; updated 2019-07-05 | Three named endorsements from well-known authors and professors above the blurb; the promise is in the title (100 pages); free sample; mentions a companion wiki | n/s on the page |
| 9 | R Programming for Data Science, Roger D. Peng. https://leanpub.com/rprogramming | R | n/s | Minimum free, suggested $20. Three packages: book ($20); book plus datasets and R code ($25); book plus lecture videos, datasets and code (minimum $30, suggested $35) | n/s | Based on a university specialisation; print copies sold through Lulu | Course (Johns Hopkins), print on Lulu, videos under a Creative Commons licence; bio lists ten other books |
| 10 | Build APIs You Won't Hate, Phil Sturgeon. https://leanpub.com/build-apis-you-wont-hate | API design | 5,236 | Minimum $26.99, suggested $29.99; a "cause gets" share; bundle "Vagrant API's" $38.99; 4 translations | 100% complete; updated 2016-03-30; 190 pages | Blurb speaks to the reader's pain ("Tasked with building an API for your company..."); sample | n/s on the page |
| 11 | Laravel: Code Bright, Dayle Rees. https://leanpub.com/codebright | Laravel PHP | 4,879 | Minimum $29.99, suggested $39.99; bundle "Code Evolution" $49.99; 7 translations | Published while in progress (says so on the page); 449 pages | Quotes from the framework's own author and readers; the author explains why he raised the price from his earlier, cheaper book | n/s on the page |
| 12 | The Art of Data Science, Roger D. Peng and Elizabeth Matsui. https://leanpub.com/artofdatascience | Data analysis process | n/s | Headline minimum $20, suggested $30; packages (book; book plus lecture videos). The package prices are laid out ambiguously on the page, so check before quoting | n/s | Aimed at practitioners and managers; print on Lulu | As above |
Two outside case studies, both from the author's own words:
| Case | What it says | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| Nicholas Zakas, The Principles of Object-Oriented Programming in JavaScript | Minimum $14.99, suggested $19.99. Of 888 purchases, 243 paid the suggested price and 74 paid more; the average price was $16.74 (higher than the minimum); the highest was $78.62; one reader returned the book to buy it again for more. Total $14,866. Fewer copies than a publisher would sell, similar royalty income. The ebook was then picked up by a traditional publisher for a print edition. He wrote in Markdown, fixed typos at once from reader reports, and used his blog and Twitter for marketing | https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2014/03/18/leanpub-one-year-later (dated 18 March 2014 in its address) |
| Swizec Teller, an unfinished book | A draft of about 6,000 words with most chapters as outlines earned $959.88 in three days ($730.40 royalty); about 8,000 visitors came from Hacker News and the promo code was used 240 times; the full text was also on GitHub | https://swizec.com/blog/i-made-dollar730-by-selling-an-unfinished-book-for-3-days/ (search summary only) |
| Jeff Geerling, free books | Reported 328 paid sales a month before, 1,910 copies in two free months, then back to the old rate in May (search summary only; his post at the usual address now returns "not found", so check) | https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2015/finished-writing-my-first-book/ links to it |
| Ryan Bigg | Compares a traditional publisher keeping over two-thirds of revenue with Leanpub's cut; Leanpub author page says his books sold over 20,000 copies (search summary only; title of the 20,000 not confirmed) | https://ryanbigg.com/2015/08/my-self-publishing-success-story |
3. What the best ones have in common
- The biggest reader counts belong to books with a free minimum. The top four counts by a wide margin: 544,007 (free minimum), 195,514 (free), 136,067 (free), then 115,385 for a $9.99 book. Books with minimums of $20 or more show 5,000 to 28,000 readers. Caution: this compares readers, not money, and it includes books from large institutions. The sample is small and nothing here proves that free caused the reach.
- Most of the largest free books sit inside an audience engine. Leek and Peng have a university course with 1.76 million enrolled; Irizarry is a Harvard professor; OpenIntro is a non-profit with a free companion site for teachers. The book is the free front door to something larger.
- Finished, maintained books keep selling. Ansible was updated in May 2025 (ten years after its first edition) and has 115,385 readers; OpenIntro was updated in December 2024. Others were finished and left alone (Node Beginner, 2018) and still show tens of thousands.
- The pages are plain. Title, one-line subtitle, a short blurb, free sample, table of contents, page and word counts, author bio. Three pages use social proof (endorsements on the ML book; quotes on Code Bright; "straight from the inventor"; the student numbers on OpenIntro).
- Short and promise-in-the-title wins. 85 pages (Node Beginner), 100 pages (the ML book), 106 pages (Brown).
- Packages, bundles, translations and print are used by the larger books. Peng's three packages put videos and code on a paid ladder above a free book; Geerling has three bundles; Leek has 31 translations; Peng, Matsui and OpenIntro point to print copies (Lulu, Amazon). Zakas's ebook led to a print edition from a publisher.
- Pay what you want works at the top end too. In Zakas's data, the average was above the minimum, 74 of 888 paid more than the suggestion, and buyers who wanted to pay more did so.
- A launch needs a traffic source. Swizec's three days were Hacker News and Reddit; Zakas used his blog and Twitter. The platform did not bring them.
- Leanpub is moving towards memberships and events. Its own 2026 posts say the platform's growth was slow and organic, and that it is now building credits ($25 each), memberships and paid workshops. A free-minimum book has no price for a credit to discount, but being "free with membership" or listed on the store may still matter. This is unverified for our case.
4. Testing against the editor's pricing reasoning
| The editor's reasoning | What the evidence says |
|---|---|
| A $0 minimum, because an emailable, updatable reader is worth more than none | Supported by reach (top four reader counts) and by Leanpub's promise of free updates to everyone. Not yet shown: whether Leanpub lets an author email free readers. Each page has "Contact the author" but I found no page that says the author may email all readers. Check the author help pages. |
| Information should be shared; someone who cannot afford it should still have it | Matches OpenIntro's stated mission and its "every student can access it, free forever" pitch. |
| Fewer paid sales, many more readers, a halo | Reach: yes, on the biggest books. Halo to other products: seen where there is a course, a companion site or a print edition (Leek, Peng, OpenIntro, Zakas's print edition). Not seen: any case of a book alone with no such engine. Geerling's reported free promotion faded after the free weeks (search summary only). |
| Readers come back to pay more or buy the next version | Zakas shows buyers paying above the minimum and one buying again for more. Suggested prices work: Irizarry suggests $49.99 on a free minimum, Leek $10, Peng $20. How many pay is not shown on any page. |
5. What this means for the book
Ranked, most to least certain:
- Keep the $0 minimum and set a suggested price (the pattern of the three largest books). Choose a suggested price that says the book has value, in the $10 to $20 range of the free-minimum books here, not the top of the range. Pay-what-you-want data (Zakas) says some readers pay above the minimum when they can.
- Tell readers in one sentence that all updates are free and arrive by email if Leanpub lets us email them; verify this first, because the editor's whole case rests on it. If it does not, the book's own site needs its own sign-up, and the page should link to it.
- Make the Leanpub page as plain as the best ones: a title with a one-line subtitle that carries the promise, a two-paragraph blurb, the free sample, the table of contents, the page and word counts, and a short bio. Put the strongest social proof (the talk, named people who will let us quote them) at the top, as the ML book does.
- Build or point to the audience engine. The big free books all sit on one. For us that is the talk, this repository and its site, and the interviews; the page should link to them, and they should link back. Do not expect Leanpub to supply readers.
- Publish in progress and update openly, and say so. Write "finished, with dated updates" or "in progress, updated on <date>" the way Brandolini and Rees do. Each update is a reason to email.
- Offer a paid ladder above the free book, only if there is something to put on it (Peng's datasets, code and videos; Geerling's bundles). For us the candidates are the transcripts, the record, and a printed edition; each needs the editor's decision.
- Plan for translations and print after the first release, as Leek (31 translations) and Zakas (print edition) did. Not before.
- Do not chase the weekly bestseller list. It ranks by revenue and copies sold in a week. A free-minimum book will not climb it, and the editor does not want that trade.
- Measure what the editor values: readers, emails collected, return visits, and how many pay above zero. Zakas published his numbers; ours should be published in the same plain way.
6. Open questions for a later pass
- Whether a Leanpub author can email all readers, including those who took the book free (the key condition for point 2).
- Lifetime lists for other categories (business, self-help, AI) and the last-week list, which I could not read.
- Geerling's and Swizec's own pages, to replace the search summaries.
- Whether the free-minimum books see paid upgrades, which no public page shows.
Where this came from
Leanpub pages read directly on 30 October 2026: https://leanpub.com/store/books?sort=bestsellers_lifetime ; the book pages named in the table (os, datasciencebook, datastyle, ansible-for-devops, nodebeginner, software-architecture-for-developers, introducing_eventstorming, theMLbook, rprogramming, build-apis-you-wont-hate, codebright, artofdatascience, ccie-spv4-comp-guide) ; https://leanpub.com/leanpub_at_sixteen ; https://leanpub.com/the_most_painful_compliment . Author posts read directly: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2015/finished-writing-my-first-book/ ; https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2014/03/18/leanpub-one-year-later . Search summaries only (not opened): the Leanpub help articles on bestseller ranking, variable pricing and success stories; https://swizec.com/blog/i-made-dollar730-by-selling-an-unfinished-book-for-3-days/ ; https://ryanbigg.com/2015/08/my-self-publishing-success-story ; https://leanpub.com/testimonials . The editor's pricing reasoning is as given in the brief for this task. Every figure above should be copied into claims/ with its URL before the manuscript uses it.