# Inkwharf vs Leanpub Canonical page: https://www.inkwharf.com/vs/leanpub Figures verified against Leanpub's published pricing on 2026-10-06. Leanpub is a publishing marketplace for technical books. ## Verdict Leanpub is a writing toolchain with a bookstore attached. Inkwharf is a bookstore you own, with no toolchain. If you write in Markdown and want the book built for you, stay on Leanpub. If you already have an EPUB and an audience, there's no reason to hand over a fifth of every sale, plus a membership if you want the toolchain unthrottled. ## Cost - Leanpub charges 20%. - On a $9.99 book that is 20% of every sale, once fixed fees are counted. - Inkwharf charges $19 a month and 0% of any sale, with a free tier to $500 of sales a month. - Below $95 a month in sales, 20% is the cheaper deal. The free tier here covers that range at $0. | Monthly sales | Leanpub per year | Inkwharf per year | Difference | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | $500/mo | $1,200 | $0 | $1,200 | | $2,000/mo | $4,800 | $228 | $4,572 | | $5,000/mo | $12,000 | $228 | $11,772 | ## What Leanpub sells on top of its cut - **Mini Author** — $10/month: 20 previews or publishes a month, up to 100 books - **Light Author** — $15/month: unlimited previews and publishes, custom themes, print-ready PDF - **Pro Author** — $20/month: adds GitHub and Dropbox sync, InDesign export, API access - **Max Author** — $35/month: adds AI writing credits and VIP support - **Ultra Author** — $99/month: adds 10× the AI usage and live help ## Where Leanpub is the better choice - **The Markdown toolchain is good, and we don't have one** — Leanpub turns a folder of Markdown into a formatted PDF and EPUB on every change. That's real engineering, and it's why people put up with the rest. Inkwharf takes an EPUB you have already made — by Vellum, Sigil, pandoc, Atticus, or Leanpub itself — and does nothing whatever to produce one. If writing-to-artefact is the problem you need solved, we don't solve it. - **Publish-while-writing is a real format, not a gimmick** — Selling an unfinished book and shipping chapters to existing buyers works, and Leanpub built the whole product around it. Updated files reach past buyers here on the same permanent link, which covers the mechanics — but nothing on this site markets an in-progress book the way their storefront does. - **Their marketplace sends traffic you didn't bring** — A DevOps title on Leanpub gets found by DevOps readers browsing Leanpub. That's worth something real, and it's worth precisely nothing to a novelist. If you have no list and your topic sits squarely in their niche, discovery you didn't pay for is the strongest argument there's against going direct. ## Where Inkwharf is - **Keeping 80% is paying 20%, and it never stops growing** — A royalty is a percentage with better manners. At $2,000 a month of sales, 20% is $400 a month — $4,800 a year — against $228 for a subscription that doesn't move when you have a good year. The crossover is low and it only goes one way. Price a book under $7.99 and it's worse than 20%: the royalty becomes 80% minus 50¢, which on a $4.99 title is a 30% cut. - **The toolchain is a second bill on top of the royalty** — Publishing on Leanpub is free, but previews are capped below the Light tier — and previewing is how you find out what the book looks like. Unlimited previews, custom themes and print-ready PDF start at $14.99 a month, and the tier with GitHub sync and API access is $19.99. So the honest comparison for an author who actually uses the toolchain is 20% of revenue plus about $240 a year, against $228 a year and no percentage at all. - **Your shop is at your address, not inside theirs** — Leanpub books live on leanpub.com under Leanpub's chrome, Leanpub's URL and Leanpub's search results. A shop here resolves at your own domain, and this site's sitemap deliberately doesn't list author storefronts — the platform doesn't compete with its own sellers for their own titles. - **Your reader doesn't need an account to buy** — A sign-up wall between a fan and their book is where direct sales die. Checkout here is an email address and a card. No password, no library account, no confirmation step standing in front of the money. - **The reader isn't a PDF viewer from 2013** — Every book gets an in-browser EPUB reader that follows the site theme, send-to-Kindle in one tap, and a free sample that's a genuine trimmed EPUB rather than a preview pane. The rest of the book is physically not inside the sample file. - **It works outside software** — Leanpub's model is bound to its marketplace, and its marketplace is engineers. Because there's no marketplace here, genre is irrelevant to the architecture — a romance backlist and a Kubernetes manual are the same product to this system. ## Side by side | | Inkwharf | Leanpub | | --- | --- | --- | | Cut of each sale | Nothing, on every plan including free | 20% at $7.99 and up; 20% plus 50¢ below it | | Subscription on top | $0 or $19/mo, and that is the whole bill | Previews capped below $14.99/mo; the toolchain is $9.99–$99/mo | | Who holds the money | Your own Stripe account. We never hold a cent | Leanpub collects, then pays a royalty | | Merchant of record | You are the merchant of record | Leanpub, which takes the tax problem off you | | Where your shop lives | Your own domain, or a free address on Inkwharf | A page on leanpub.com | | Buyer account required | None. An email address and a card | A Leanpub account | | Who owns the buyer | Every buyer's email address is yours | The marketplace | | Writing toolchain | None. Bring a finished EPUB | Markdown to PDF and EPUB, rebuilt on every change | | In-progress publishing | Updated files reach past buyers | Built around it, and marketed as such | | Discovery | None. Your shop is not listed anywhere on this site | A browsable store with real technical traffic | | Reading experience | In-browser reader and send-to-Kindle on every book | PDF and EPUB downloads | | Free sample | First chapters cut into a real EPUB the buyer can read | A sample the platform generates | | DRM | DRM-free EPUB, watermarked to the buyer | DRM-free | | Exclusivity | None. Keep selling everywhere else the same day | None | | Works outside tech | Any. Fiction, non-fiction, technical, cookbooks | In principle yes; in practice a software audience | ## Questions ### Can I keep writing in Leanpub and sell here? Yes, and for a lot of authors that's the right answer. Leanpub will export an EPUB from your Markdown; upload that file to your own shop and sell it at 0%. You keep the toolchain you like and stop paying a fifth of every sale for a storefront you don't control. Nothing here asks for exclusivity, so the book can stay on their marketplace at the same time. ### Does Inkwharf build a book from Markdown? No. This is checkout, delivery and a shop of your own — the half of the job that starts once an EPUB exists. Pandoc, Sigil, Vellum, Atticus and Leanpub itself all produce files that upload cleanly, and every upload is checked against the EPUB spec before it can go on sale. ### I have no audience. Is selling direct pointless? Not pointless, but be honest about the order of operations. A marketplace with traffic in your niche is worth a cut while you have nobody to sell to. The mistake is staying there once you do, at which point the percentage is a tax on an audience you built yourself. Opening a shop here is free, so it can sit alongside the marketplace until the numbers say otherwise. ### What about the reader-sets-the-price model? You set a price per book here; there's no pay-what-you-want slider. If variable pricing is the core of how you sell, Leanpub does it and we don't. ### Isn't publishing on Leanpub free? Publishing is, and the 20% royalty applies whether or not you subscribe. What the cheaper tiers cap is previewing, which is the loop you actually spend your time in while writing. Unlimited previews, custom themes and print-ready PDF start at $14.99 a month; GitHub sync and API access are $19.99. Worth knowing before comparing a royalty to a subscription, because at the top of their stack it's both. ## Sources Every claim above about Leanpub's pricing, checked 2026-10-06: - 80% royalty, less 50¢ below $7.99 — - Author memberships $9.99–$99/mo billed monthly (quarterly totals $26.97–$269), publishing free without one — - No exclusivity —