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by mdaniel 655 days ago
Merely for your consideration, if you created a GitHub repo and put that sample PDF in there instead of Google Drive, it would not be subject to rate limiting as Drive links are and would also make your book show up in GitHub searches, which I would suspect contains a lot of your target audience. Don't overlook the value of adding GitHub "topics", too, which are often a way projects get discovered: e.g. https://github.com/topics/software-architecture

I actually don't know if LeanPub has its own errata and issue tracking system, but a lot of authors also use GitHub issues for tracking feedback from their editions, so if that's something which interests you then you'd have one stop shopping for all community interactions around your book
2 comments
meaboutsoftware 655 days ago
Great idea - I already have a repo for the book where I store diagrams. I haven't thought about it. I will move it there.

Thank you!

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ecuaflo 655 days ago
Then you could also sell it on my platform https://gitsell.dev for way less than the ~20% fee you pay leanpub.
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mdaniel 655 days ago
So, two things:

1. Pushing Buy on <https://gitsell.dev/u/bitofbreeze/r/bitofbreeze/git-sell> just spins and there is no information on the screen, nor any kabooms on the devtools

2. It also seems from your free "test" link that it's not selling content it's selling access to the repo, which requires buyers to already have a GitHub account and thus is absolutely incomparable to "drive by" purchases. I could imagine that being a better story for long-term relations, like priority support and edition updates, but again, it's just simply not the same audience

Anyway, the reason I was trying the Buy button is because LeanPub has a slider for "pay what you want" within the bounds set by the author. Some authors have the lower bound set to $0 so it is quite literally pay what you want. I doubt your system would allow that same flexibility

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ecuaflo 646 days ago
Just want to let you know I took your advice and enabled drive-by purchases. Thanks a lot.
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ecuaflo 654 days ago
Thanks for trying it out.

1. I’m seeing a toast when logged out saying to log in to buy. It only shows the first time, I can improve that so that if someone misses it the first time and tries again they can see it.

2. Great point, I can add support for drive-by purchases. Either allowing downloading a copy of the repo or generating an ssh key someone can clone the repo with.

Yea my system does not currently allow flexible pricing, it’s free or for a set price. I have plans to support it too.

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