A Million Lessons
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A Million Lessons

A Conversation with Selected Leanpub Authors, as Leanpub Passes $1,000,000 in Author Royalties

About the Book

When Peter Armstrong and Scott Patten founded Leanpub in 2010, they had a clear purpose: to create the best way to write and publish in-progress ebooks.

By “the best”, they didn’t just intend to develop the best toolchain and workflow for authors and publishers. They also intended to actually help authors make money from their writing. Even if you were just a few chapters in, even if your target audience were limited to only a thousand or so other experts in your field, Leanpub was supposed to help you actually get paid for all the work you do, writing and marketing your book.

Recently, Leanpub passed the point where it has helped authors earn more than $1,000,000. This is an important milestone for any bootstrapped startup: for us, it is a proof of concept, validating the Lean Publishing philosophy.

It’s also a big moment for us in another, very special sense. We’ve only reached this milestone because of the feedback we’ve received from our “early adopter” authors. Leanpub was built on the principles of Customer Development, which means that Leanpub authors are not just users. They are also contributors to the development of Leanpub.

So, this book is both a commemoration of an important milestone for a startup, and a tribute to our hard-working (and very smart) authors. It consists of transcriptions from the Lean Publishing Podcast and selected responses to a recent Leanpub author survey. We hope you enjoy reading about our authors’ careers, their interests, and their experiences as pioneers at the frontier of 21st-century publishing.

Peter Armstrong, Scott Patten and Len Epp

December 19, 2013 

About the Authors

Peter Armstrong
Peter Armstrong

Peter Armstrong is the founder and CEO of Leanpub. He has over two decades of experience in software, including eight years as a developer at Silicon Valley startups. He founded Ruboss in 2008, and launched Leanpub in 2010.

Peter coined the term Lean Publishing. Lean Publishing is the act of publishing an in-progress book using lightweight tools and many iterations to get reader feedback, pivot until you have the right book and build traction once you do.

Peter is the creator of Markua, the Markdown dialect used on Leanpub. He is the author of a number of books, including Lean PublishingThe Markua Manual and Programming for Kids. He has a BSc in Computer Science and Psychology from the University of Victoria.

He lives in Victoria, BC with his wife and son.

Len Epp
Len Epp

Len is a Leanpub co-founder. He likes cats and rational arguments.

About the Contributors

Azat Mardan
Azat Mardan

Update: you can check out my books and buy them at http://webapplog.com/books.

Azat Mardan has over 12 years of experience in web, mobile and software development. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Informatics and a Master of Science in Information Systems Technology degree, Azat possesses deep academic knowledge as well as extensive practical experience.

Recently, he has worked as an engineer at the curated social media news aggregator website, Storify.com (acquired by LiveFyre). Before that, Azat worked as a CTO/co-founder at Gizmo — an enterprise cloud platform for mobile marketing campaigns, and has undertaken the prestigious 500 Startups business accelerator program. Previously, he was developing mission-critical applications for government agencies in Washington, DC: National Institutes of Health, National Center for Biotechnology Information,Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Lockheed Martin. Azat is a frequent attendee at Bay Area tech meet-ups and hackathons (AngelHack hackathon ’12 finalist with team FashionMetric.com).

In addition, Azat teaches technical classes at General Assembly and Hack Reactor, pariSOMA and Marakana (acquired by Twitter) to much acclaim.

In his spare time, Azat writes about technology on his blog: webAppLog.com which is number one in “express.js tutorial” Google search results. Azat is also the author of Express.js Guide, Rapid Prototyping with JS and Oh My JS!

Caitlin McDonald
Caitlin McDonald

Caitlin holds a PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies from the University of Exeter. She is an award-winning scholar and writer about digital communities, data science, and dance. She is an award-winning researcher providing her expertise as a digital anthropologist for a leading technology strategy research and advisory organisation based in London. Caitlin has also completed an International Coach Federation-accredited coach training course which she uses in her mission to help people rediscover wonder.

More about Caitlin? Find her on LinkedIn and Academia.edu.

Chris Hartjes
Chris Hartjes

Chris Hartjes has been helping teams try and produce fewer bugs in production since 1998 with a recent focus on tools and test automation in PHP and Python.

He lives in the snowy wilds of Lucan, Ontario, Canada,

Malcolm Maclean
Malcolm Maclean

I have a passion for knowledge and I realise that part of the responsibility of gathering knowledge is being able to advance the state of the human condition in some way.

My aims in writing these books are to play with software, achieve personal goals and try something new for fun. It also helps that I think Open Source, technology, the visual representation of data and information rock in serious ways.

The books that I write are a mechanism to support my own learning, so the way I explain things is focused on trying to impart understanding in a simple but functional way.

I'm totally in awe of the Open Source community that has made this type of work possible. If you feel that you would like to support continued development of this content, feel free to donate when you download.

If you're looking for a hard copy version of any of these publications, they will be available through Amazon (not all will be available sorry).

Didier Lebouc
Didier Lebouc

- Gaucher

- Daltonien

- Époux et père de famille

- Citoyen du monde

- Français et tunisien de coeur

- Ingénieur de formation et, parfois, de profession

- Acteur consentant et énervé de la globalisation

- Spectateur du Tour de France

- Blogueur autoproclamé

- Écrivain épisodique

- Aux intérêts multiples et souvent contradictoires : innovation, Tunisie, France, généalogie, écriture, humour, histoire, web, philatélie, projets, révolutions, agilité, langue(s), économie, chroniques, sourire ...

- Contribuable invétéré, abonné à l'électricité et à la redevance télévisuelle mais pas au gaz

- Et bien plus encore ...

Andrew Dubber
Andrew Dubber

Andrew Dubber is Professor of Music Industries Innovation at Birmingham City University. He's a member of the Centre for Media and Cultural Research, and is Award Leader for the MA in Music Industries (which can be studied online via distance learning from anywhere in the world) and also runs the MA in Music Radio.

He is the founder of New Music Strategies, a pan-European music consultancy and strategy organisation focusing primarily on non-commercial and social projects that use music to improve lives. He is also a member of the Board of Advisors for Bandcamp.

He can be found online at http://andrewdubber.com

J. B. Rainsberger
J. B. Rainsberger

J. B. Rainsberger helps software companies better satsify their customers and the businesses they support. Over the years, he has learned to write valuable software, overcome many of his social deficiencies, and built a life that he loves. He travels the world sharing what he's learned, hoping to help other people get what they want out of work and out of their lives. Even though he's traveled Europe most of the past two years, he lives in Atlantic Canada with his wife, Sarah, and two cats.

Gerald M. Weinberg
Gerald M. Weinberg

I've always been interested in helping smart people be happy and productive. To that end, I've published books on human behavior, including Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method, The Psychology of Computer Programming, Perfect Software and Other Fallacies, and an Introduction to General Systems Thinking. I've also written books on leadership including Becoming a Technical Leader, The Secrets of Consulting (Foreword by Virginia Satir), More Secrets of Consulting, and the nine-volume Quality Software series.

I try to incorporate my knowledge of science, engineering, and human behavior into all of my writing and consulting work (with writers, hi-tech researchers, software engineers, and people whose life-situation could require the use of a service dog). I write novels about such people, including The Aremac Project, Aremac Power, Jigglers, First Stringers, Second Stringers, The Hands of God, Freshman Murders, Where There's a Will There's a Murder, Earth's Endless Effort, and Mistress of Molecules—all about how my brilliant protagonists produce quality work and learn to be happy. My books that are not yet on Leanpub may be found as eBooks at <http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JerryWeinberg>; on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B000AP8TZ8; and at Barnes and Noble bookstore: http://tinyurl.com/4eudqk5.

Early in my career, I was the architect for the Project Mercury's space tracking network and designer of the world's first multiprogrammed operating system. I won the Warnier Prize, the Stevens Award, and the first Software Testing Professionals' Luminary Award, all for my writing on software quality. I was also elected a charter member of the Computing Hall of Fame in San Diego and chosen for the University of Nebraska Hall of Fame.

But the "award" I'm most proud of is the book, The Gift of Time (Fiona Charles, ed.) written by my student and readers for my 75th birthday. Their stories make me feel that I've been at least partially successful at helping smart people be happy.

Johanna Rothman
Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” offers frank advice for your tough problems. She helps leaders and teams do reasonable things that work. Equipped with that knowledge, they can then decide how to adapt their product development.

With her trademark practicality and humor, Johanna is the author of 18 books and hundreds of articles. Find the Pragmatic Manager, a monthly email newsletter, and her blogs at jrothman.com and createadaptablelife.com.

She is the author of these books:

In addition, she is a contributor to:

For fiction:

Julien Bayle
Julien Bayle

Julien Bayle is a multidisciplinary and independent artist based in France and working at the juncture of sound & visual. He merges visual art, music composition, physical approach of sound art and data visualization by creating advanced programmed installations and audio/visual live performances.He tries to address the question of disrupted continuum, interferences and representation of concepts by using physics of sound and error/artifact magnification.

His work is based on both experimentations and programming, using concepts of time expansion & contraction as main guidelines. His interests for all microsound and granular synthesis expand his work and open a new way of including field recording and previously designed sound into his own practices. He seeks to depict a world saturated by meaningless informations , societies complexity through a positive-nihilist kind of deconstruction of processes, structures and results.

He performed his audio-visual live performances in international festivals like ELEKTRA in Canada, or sound:frame in Austria and exhibited his work in galleries in Europe. He’s also a art teacher and he provides advanced technical courses about the place of technology in new media creation, invited by different art schools in Europe.

He's an Ableton Certified Trainer and Max MSP programmer expert. He also speaks and read C++ & OpenFrameworks, Java & Processing, Arduino & Physical Computing.

He co-leads the Bordille Records art label with François Larini, works closely with & records for Canadian imprint Yatra Arts and was selected artist of SHAPE Network during 2016.

In 2017, he founds and launches vøid label for editing and publishing all his new works.

This same year, he also officially founds his own studio.

Manuel Kiessling
Manuel Kiessling

Manuel Kiessling is a software developer and IT manager living in Cologne, Germany. He's interested in Behaviour- and Test-Driven Development and Agile practices.

Paul Bradshaw
Paul Bradshaw

Paul Bradshaw runs the MA in Data Journalism and the MA in Multiplatform and Mobile Journalism at Birmingham City University, where he is an associate professor. He publishes the Online Journalism Blog, and is the founder of investigative journalism website HelpMeInvestigate. He has written for the Guardian and Telegraph’s data blogs, journalism.co.uk, Press Gazette, InPublishing, Nieman Reports and the Poynter Institute in the US. Formerly Visiting Professor at City University’s School of Journalism in London, He is the author of the Online Journalism Handbook, now in its second edition, Magazine Editing (3rd Edition) with John Morrish and Mobile-First Journalism with Steve Hill. Other books which Bradshaw has contributed to include Investigative Journalism (second edition), Web Journalism: A New Form of Citizenship; and Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives.

His books on Leanpub include Scraping for JournalistsFinding Stories in Spreadsheets, the Data Journalism Heist, Snapchat for Journalists, and 8000 Holes: How the 2012 Olympic Torch Relay Lost its Way.

Bradshaw has been listed in Journalism.co.uk’s list of the leading innovators in journalism and media and Poynter’s most influential people in social media. In 2010, he was shortlisted for Multimedia Publisher of the Year. In 2016 he was part of a team that won the CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Awards.

In addition to teaching and writing, Paul acts as a consultant and trainer to a number of organisations on social media and data journalism. You can find him on Twitter @paulbradshaw

Pedro Teixeira
Pedro Teixeira

Geek, programmer, freelancer, and entrepreneur. Author of some Node.js modules, the Node Tuts screencast show, and the Hands-on Node.js e-book and overall fervent proclaimer of the Node.js creed.

Wrote a book for Wiley on Node.js.

Partner of YLD.

Organizer of the Lisbon JavaScript Conference.

Reg “raganwald” Braithwaite
Reg “raganwald” Braithwaite

When he's not shipping CoffeeScript, JavaScript, Ruby, and Java applications scaling out to millions of users, Reg "Raganwald" Braithwaite creates programming libraries such as Allong.es, Method Combinators, Katy, JQuery Combinators, YouAreDaChef, andand, and others.

He writes primarily about programming. Find out more on his  home page.

Ros Barber
Ros Barber

Writer.  

But also scholar, lecturer, former computer programmer, with a background in science, a passion for history and literary biography, and an interest in the relationship between belief and perception.  This sentence should explain my (perhaps disparate-seeming) writing interests:  fiction and poetry (including The Marlowe Papers and Devotion), scholarly articles and books on Shakespeare and Marlowe (including Shakespeare the Evidence), and self-development work (including How to Achieve the Impossible).  Having tried to separate myself into these different pockets for a few years (aware that to many they seem incompatible) I am now stitching myself together.

I love fiction.  But I also love fact.  There is a lot of fiction being passed off as fact, and vice versa. I do what I can to redress the balance.

I like clarity. I aim to achieve more of it. I try to help others have more of it too.

There. Suddenly everything I do makes sense.

Roy Osherove
Roy Osherove

Roy Osherove is the author of The Art Of Unit Testing, and has been in leadership roles for most of his professional life, acting as team lead, CTO and architect in many places. He's had many failures to learn from but also some great successes, that he likes to share by doing training courses and mentoring. You can read his blog at 5whys.com

Ryan Bigg
Ryan Bigg

Ryan has been writing books and documentation for Rails for over a decade. These books have sold over 15,000 copies worldwide. On top of this, Ryan is prolific on Stack Overflow and maintains a few open source projects too.

Ryan lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Patrick Kua
Patrick Kua

Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with almost 20 years of experience. His personal passion is accelerating the growth and success of tech organisations and technical leaders. He has had many years of hands-on experience, leading, managing and improving complex organisations and software systems as the former CTO and Chief Scientist of N26 (Berlin, Germany) and as a Technical Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks. He is a frequent keynote and conference speaker, author of three books including The Retrospective Handbook, Talking with Tech Leads and Building Evolutionary Architectures and runs the popular curated newsletter for leaders in tech, "Level Up". You can find him online on twitter as @patkua or running his very popular “Tech Lead Skills for Developers” workshop around the world.

Thomas Davis
Thomas Davis

Hi everybody, I'm a front end web developer who dips into server side but usually only concerned with the restful resources. I love working on open source projects and love sharing things I learn as it consolidates my knowledge. I also study philosophy part time as one of my greater interest.

Vsevolod Domkin
Vsevolod Domkin

Hi, I'm Vsevolod Dyomkin (or Domkin according to the passport) from Kyiv, Ukraine.

I'm a Lisp programmer and enthusiast, a Natural Language Processing researcher, an occasional writer/blogger, and a teacher.

You can find some more relevant information at http://vseloved.github.io/

Willem Larsen
Willem Larsen

For 15 years Willem designed cutting-edge learning tools for all ages in the natural sciences—at the Oregon Zoo, OMSI, Tryon Creek State Park, and the Eddy Foundation Land Trust. He was a founding partner of Cascadia Wild!, a founding member of TrackersNW, and a former partner at "Where Are Your Keys?" co-developing the approach that led to the craft of Language Hunting.

Willem believes that languages, traditions, and skills are treasures that communities hold as a whole—only by learning together can we create the rich lives we want for each other.

Willem Larsen is Creative Director of Language Hunters, a 501(c)(3) non-profit based in Portland, OR.

http://languagehunters.org

Stay updated at http://blog.languagehunters.org

YvesHanoulle
YvesHanoulle

The Agile community knows Yves Hanoulle from his many contributions, such as the public Agile conferences Google calendar, his Agile Thursday Quiz, the coach retreats and conferences he’s paired to organize, daily coaching questions via @Retroflections, and the Agile Games Google group, just to name a few. He promoted PairCoaching, an idea which has been adopted by many agile trainers and coaches. He’s constantly learning, and passing on what he learns as a coach and trainer to organizations large and small.

A self-identified change artist and first follower, one of Yves’ unique qualities is that he gives free lifetime support on anything he does: every client, everything he writes and presents, every workshop he leads.

Yves believes in maintaining a sustainable pace both professionally and personally. Yves has parentpair programmed an android game with his 13 year old son www.anguis.be You can learn more about Yves at http://www.hanoulle.be/yves-hanoulle/, and find him on social media as YvesHanoulle.

Table of Contents

  •  
    • Introduction
  • The Leanpub Podcast Interviews
    • Roy Osherove
    • Yves Hanoulle
    • Johanna Rothman
    • Reginald Braithwaite
    • Manuel Kiessling
    • Amanda Taub
    • Andrew Dubber
    • Caitlin McDonald
    • John Hunter
    • Chris Hartjes
    • Paul Bradshaw
    • Luc Beaudoin
    • Taylor Otwell
    • Matthias Noback
    • Derek Sivers
    • Roger Peng
    • W. Jason Gilmore
    • Ryan Bigg
    • Jeff Leek
    • Paul M. Jones
    • Brian Caffo
    • Thomas Davis
    • Patrick Kua
    • Obie Fernandez
    • Jeff Geerling
    • Emmanuel Nataf
    • Claire Bowern
    • Phil Sturgeon
  • The Leanpub Author Survey
    • Andrew Dubber
    • Azat Mardanov
    • Diana Larsen
    • Dider Lebouc
    • Gerald M. Weinberg
    • J. B. Rainsberger
    • Johanna Rothman
    • Julien Bayle
    • Luc Beaudoin
    • Malcolm Maclean
    • Manuel Kiessling
    • Mike Vizdos
    • Patrick Kua
    • Paul Bradshaw
    • Pedro Teixeira
    • Ros Barber
    • Ryan Bigg
    • Simon Brown
    • Thomas Davis
    • Thomas Kilian
    • Vsevolod Dyomkin
    • Willem Larsen
    • Yves Hanoulle

Causes Supported

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https://watsi.org

Watsi is a global crowdfunding platform for healthcare that enables anyone to donate as little as $5 to directly fund life-changing medical care for people in need. 100% of every donation funds medical care and we are dedicated to complete transparency.

Watsi (watsi.org) is the first global crowdfunding platform for healthcare, enabling anyone to directly fund low-cost, high-impact medical care for people in need. 100% of every donation on Watsi’s platform directly funds medical care for patients, the organization does not take a cut for its operations. Since launching in August of 2012, Watsi has funded medical care for more than 700 people in 16 countries.

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