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Specifically in the mostly-but-not-exclusively tech world, Leanpub (Leanpub.com) is very close to a bandcamp for books. Authors get most of the sales revenue, a

Specifically in the mostly-but-not-exclusively tech world, Leanpub (Leanpub.com) is very close to a bandcamp for books. Authors get most of the sales revenue, and are free to publish what they want including in-progress works. I’ve got a few books there, the readership is smaller than with my mainstream-published titles but as this article shows, that’s because readers don’t yet know about these places.

mhd 6y ago
Bandcamp is 15%, Leanpub is 20%, right? (For sales alone, leanpub also seems to be a lot about the publication process, i.e. how to get the book made, not just selling a finished PDF/epub) Another interesting shop I've discovered for me within the last year is itch.io. It's mostly for games, but I found out that this includes more and more tabletop role-playing games as e-books. The site is responsive, the individual "store fronts" often have unique customizations, and payment/downloads works reliably. And the RPG PDF market is similarly dominated by a single entity (drivethrurpg), so getting away from that feels good, too. They also feature an interesting revenue sharing option, where you're deducated the payment processor fees (stripe,paypal) directly, but after that the amount you pay to itch.io is totally customizable (and even their default is just 10%). There's also a culture of "pay what you want" publications and people paying more than what's asked for. This is partly due to publications often being smaller and more frequent, instead of big honking monographs. As opposed to the programming/entrepreneur market, where e-books often seems ridiculously overpriced for what you get ("here's slightly value-added rephrasing of the react tutorial, that's $49, please").
- asicsp 6y ago
  Gumroad offers better returns compared to Leanpub and author payouts are much faster, but I still put my books on Leanpub as well. Two main reasons: 1) Leanpub is more well known for ebooks, their UI is better and 45-day return policy is great for readers 2) Leanpub has weekly/monthly newsletters that also offers books at a discounted rate. That gives me decent sales. And I think their SEO optimization is better than Gumroad.
- polm23 6y ago
  It should be noted that the main reason for itch's success as a home for tabletop RPG books is that the main competitor in the field, DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, is a pile of hot garbage with a UI that was bad ten years ago and hasn't changed.
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mhd 6y ago

Bandcamp is 15%, Leanpub is 20%, right? (For sales alone, leanpub also seems to be a lot about the publication process, i.e. how to get the book made, not just selling a finished PDF/epub) Another interesting shop I've discovered for me within the last year is itch.io. It's mostly for games, but I found out that this includes more and more tabletop role-playing games as e-books. The site is responsive, the individual "store fronts" often have unique customizations, and payment/downloads works reliably. And the RPG PDF market is similarly dominated by a single entity (drivethrurpg), so getting away from that feels good, too. They also feature an interesting revenue sharing option, where you're deducated the payment processor fees (stripe,paypal) directly, but after that the amount you pay to itch.io is totally customizable (and even their default is just 10%). There's also a culture of "pay what you want" publications and people paying more than what's asked for. This is partly due to publications often being smaller and more frequent, instead of big honking monographs. As opposed to the programming/entrepreneur market, where e-books often seems ridiculously overpriced for what you get ("here's slightly value-added rephrasing of the react tutorial, that's $49, please").

asicsp 6y ago
Gumroad offers better returns compared to Leanpub and author payouts are much faster, but I still put my books on Leanpub as well. Two main reasons: 1) Leanpub is more well known for ebooks, their UI is better and 45-day return policy is great for readers 2) Leanpub has weekly/monthly newsletters that also offers books at a discounted rate. That gives me decent sales. And I think their SEO optimization is better than Gumroad.
polm23 6y ago
It should be noted that the main reason for itch's success as a home for tabletop RPG books is that the main competitor in the field, DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, is a pile of hot garbage with a UI that was bad ten years ago and hasn't changed.

deleted 6y ago

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