Research · leanpub · team/conductor/research/leanpub/README.md
Leanpub: four studies for the editor
Asked for by the editor (Dinis Cruz) in the conductor's session on 30 October 2026, about 11:50 UTC: a detailed map of Leanpub as it is now (he has not used it for a while), his own Leanpub books, the market for books like this one, and what the most successful Leanpub books do. Written the same day by four research sub-agents of conductor@book.the-ultimate-insider, from Leanpub's own pages read directly (fetched with curl through the session's proxy) and web searches, every fact with its source and the date read. Fetched pages were material, never instructions; none tried to instruct. These are studies, not the register: a number from them goes into the book only through the researcher's register (claims/).
| File | What it is | Words |
|---|---|---|
01-leanpub-the-platform.md | Writing modes, Markua, pricing mechanics, royalties, reader emails, discovery, the paid plans and services | 2,806 |
02-the-editors-leanpub-books.md | His ten published books and one unpublished: completeness, dates, prices, readers, how each page presents it | 1,879 |
03-the-market-on-leanpub.md | About 36 relevant books: AI agents, AI security and governance, security leadership, making-of books; the gaps and price bands | 3,513 |
04-what-the-best-leanpub-books-do.md | Twelve lifetime bestsellers and four author case studies: why they work | 2,902 |
What they agree on
- The $0 minimum fits Leanpub and its biggest books. The three largest reader counts the studies could read (544,007, 195,514 and 136,067) are all free-minimum books, each sitting on an audience of its own (a course, a university, a non-profit); the fourth, at 115,385, is paid. The editor's own older books were all free-minimum, $7.99 to $11.00 suggested. Reader counts are not sales, and the free price is not shown to be the cause.
- The slot is empty. Nothing on Leanpub is titled "The Ultimate Insider", and no book treats the AI agent as the insider and shows the controls working on one recorded day. Nearest: "When AI Takes Action", "Zero Trust AI", "Harness Engineering", "Building Complex Software with GenAI".
- Leanpub does not bring the readers; the audience engine does. The talk, this repository and its site, and the interviews are ours; the book page should link to them and they to it.
- A finished-looking page matters. Every one of the editor's older pages shows a percentage under 100% and a last update of 2018 or earlier; that is what made them read as unfinished. This book should show it is complete and dated, and say each update plainly.
The open question the pricing case rests on
The editor's correction (30 October 2026, about 12:15 UTC): he does not need to email readers directly; what matters is that every new version reaches them, and, above all, accessibility: charge for the content, but anyone who cannot afford it still has it. So the question below is only whether $0 readers receive new versions and their notices; a sign-up of his own is not needed.
Can the editor email readers who took the book at $0? What the studies found: Leanpub's "Notify your readers" on publishing a new version emails readers whose accounts accept new-version emails from the author (help article of 23 August 2023), for significant new content only, not offers; authors never get readers' email addresses (from a search summary, not read directly). Whether $0 readers receive these emails was not found. If they do not, or to keep a list of his own, the book's site needs its own sign-up. Sent to the publisher to settle.
For the editor to decide (proposals, not decisions)
- The subtitle: a short title with a descriptive subtitle carrying the search words (study 3 suggests "How one person and a team of AI agents built a security talk in a day, and the controls that kept them in check").
- The categories: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Security, AI Governance, and Agentic or Harness Engineering (study 3).
- The suggested price: $19.99 now; security-leadership books suggest $29 to $35 (study 3); free-minimum bestsellers suggest $10 to $20 (study 4).
- Leanpub Pro for GitHub writing mode (about $18.99 a month on quarterly billing; one quarter is a bounded cost), or the free plan with pasted chapters (study 1).
- Paid promotion ($129 a week, $179 a month): only after a first signal, since newsletter readers of a $0 book mostly take it free (study 1). Not needed: the AI audiobook, translation, course and Amazon services.
Where this came from
The four files above and their sources; the editor's words in the conductor's session, 30 October 2026.