Ideas Supporting Ideals

At Leanpub, we believe that building a community of readers while you're writing can be inspiring. We build tools that help authors collaborate globally, write and release updates to their books easily, and communicate with all their readers instantly.

A couple of years ago, something unexpected started happening. Some authors discovered another use for this set of tools. They saw the potential not just to publish works in progress, but also to publish books that address unfolding events, often with the achievement of a precise public outcome in mind.

In other words, they're using Leanpub to publish ebooks supporting specific social and political causes.

We've seen books published to raise awareness about damaging new legislation, to raise funds to help people affected by natural disasters or simply to rapidly address controversies that don't get the kind of coverage they should in the news media.

At the same time, Leanpub authors naturally began asking us if they could share all or some of the royalties from their books with nonprofit and charitable organizations.

We think that's a great idea, so we've created the 'Leanpub for Causes' royalty sharing program. If you register your organization, Leanpub authors will be able to share their royalties with you.

Please note that it's free to register and registration comes with no obligations.

Click on the tabs at the top of this page to see the list of organizations that have already signed up for the program, and the list of books currently sharing royalties with them.

Registering your organization is easy: just click the 'Sign Up Now!' button and provide us with some basic information. After you've been accepted, at the beginning of each month we'll send you your shared royalties via PayPal. All you have to do is click to accept the payment.

We're just getting started with our cause-based royalty sharing program and we'd love to hear from you if you have any questions or suggestions. You can email us anytime at hello@leanpub.com to learn more.

How Leanpub for Causes Works

Leanpub authors can optionally choose an organization to share their book royalties with. They can share anywhere from 10% to 100% of their royalties. Authors can only choose one cause per book, and they can change their choice at any time.

From an accounting perspective, royalty sharing is not a donation: your organization is simply earning some royalty income from a book's sales, instead of all the royalty income going to the author. This way, from Leanpub's point of view, it's just a royalty split, and we don't drown in accounting paperwork and cross-border tax nightmares.

Requirements for an Organization to Register

Signing up doesn't oblige you to do anything, but any organization that wants to participate in the Leanpub for Causes program must:

1. Be a registered not-for-profit or charity.
2. Be willing to accept royalty income as income, not as a donation.
3. Be willing to accept royalty income via a payment to a PayPal email address.
4. Not send donation receipts to Leanpub. The royalties we pay are treated by Leanpub as an expense, not as a donation.