4 ms·

Off-topic comment on Leanpub -- Judging from the "best sellers" list, you handle a lot of software-related titles. Yet the categories pulldown in the bookstore

Off-topic comment on Leanpub -- Judging from the "best sellers" list, you handle a lot of software-related titles. Yet the categories pulldown in the bookstore has only two obvious software-related topics: the rather specific "Agile", and the rather broad "Software". I wonder whether you might not help browsers discover books of interest, by providing more categories and sub-categories (e.g., distinguish programming from data science, and under programming have separate sub-topics like Javascript, Python, and web).

peterarmstrong 11y ago
That's a very good point. Adding to backlog :)
- jtwebman 11y ago
  It is nice to see people from the tools we use daily watch Hacker News and actually listen to what we talk about. Thank you and I will be using you guys for my first book on Functional Programming soon!
  - peterarmstrong 11y ago
    Great! Brian Marick's book on Functional Programming (https://leanpub.com/fp-oo https://leanpub.com/fp-oo) has done really well; looking forward to seeing more of them!
darkmarmot 11y ago
I second this. Also you seem to have more erotic/unusual titles...
- bencollier49 11y ago
  I think that's because vanity publishing is typically very popular amongst programming and "romance" authors.
  - peterarmstrong 11y ago
    We like to think of what we're doing as Lean Publishing (self-published in-progress ebooks), not vanity publishing. We only earn money if the author does, unlike most of the scum that prey on authors who wish to self-publish and spend thousands of dollars to get a box of books that sit in their basement. The Leanpub workflow is totally free to use, and we're making it better all the time. Now, frankly, I'm a programming book author myself (I've written 3 programming books) and we have tons of programming books on Leanpub -- but I really wish we had a lot more romance and other "genre" books than we currently do. I even went to Brisbane to speak at GenreCon Australia (http://www.genrecon.com.au/ http://www.genrecon.com.au/) in 2013 to try to jump-start this, but frankly our usability wasn't there yet. We'll get there.

peterarmstrong 11y ago

That's a very good point. Adding to backlog :)

jtwebman 11y ago
It is nice to see people from the tools we use daily watch Hacker News and actually listen to what we talk about. Thank you and I will be using you guys for my first book on Functional Programming soon!
- peterarmstrong 11y ago
  Great! Brian Marick's book on Functional Programming (https://leanpub.com/fp-oo https://leanpub.com/fp-oo) has done really well; looking forward to seeing more of them!

darkmarmot 11y ago

I second this. Also you seem to have more erotic/unusual titles...

bencollier49 11y ago
I think that's because vanity publishing is typically very popular amongst programming and "romance" authors.
- peterarmstrong 11y ago
  We like to think of what we're doing as Lean Publishing (self-published in-progress ebooks), not vanity publishing. We only earn money if the author does, unlike most of the scum that prey on authors who wish to self-publish and spend thousands of dollars to get a box of books that sit in their basement. The Leanpub workflow is totally free to use, and we're making it better all the time. Now, frankly, I'm a programming book author myself (I've written 3 programming books) and we have tons of programming books on Leanpub -- but I really wish we had a lot more romance and other "genre" books than we currently do. I even went to Brisbane to speak at GenreCon Australia (http://www.genrecon.com.au/ http://www.genrecon.com.au/) in 2013 to try to jump-start this, but frankly our usability wasn't there yet. We'll get there.