
A retrospective on my first lean publishing experience - spatten
http://aaronsumner.com/2012/07/lean-publishing-retrospective/
======
spatten
(cofounder of Leanpub, here)

Thanks for the great post, Aaron. Lots of food for thought.

First, Aaron is really our ideal author: he has an audience, has some content
that would make a great book and he values his time (i.e. he knows it's a bad
idea to create a book generation workflow and setup a website to sell the
book). Oh, and he's a good writer :).

What stood out for me is this line:

    
    
       My original plan was to deal with all the rendering myself, set up an
       online storefront somewhere, and make it available that way. I wasn’t 
       crazy about that plan, but it seemed like that’s how most of the 
       self-published authors I’d read in the past handled it. 
       Then I stumbled across Leanpub.
    

It pains me deeply that Aaron didn't know about Leanpub. It should be the
first thing that crosses the mind of anyone on HN who thinks about publishing.

I think I'll finish up this feature I'm working on (which is awesome and our
authors have been asking for it forever, don't get me wrong, but doesn't solve
the problem of people not hearing about us) and then stick the marketing hat
on my head with crazy-glue.

~~~
ruralocity
Author of the post/book in question here--hey Scott, to be fair I don't hang
out much on HN unless someone points something out to me here :)

Seriously, though, I think is getting an increasing amount of word-of-mouth
publicity. That's how I heard about it when I did--a panelist on the Ruby
Rogues podcast mentioned a new book that the author had "Leanpubbed" and I did
some sleuthing from there (and you know you're on the right track when your
product name is used as a verb). So in that regard there may be more that we
Leanpub authors can do to promote the platform and keep it going strong--it's
been good for me and I'd love to see it be a rousing success, you know? Are
there ways you can help us help you get the word out?

~~~
peterarmstrong
Regarding getting the word out, I think Leanpub authors saying good things
about us on HN and Twitter, as well as in great blog posts like yours, are the
best ways. So, thanks very much for writing such a fantastic post! I'll add it
to our buzz page later today...

