Leanpub Shows Their TImidity - Accepts Original Works Only.

(Logo property of Leanpub as trademark.)

Just got suspended for "copyright violations" from Leanpub (on one account, anyway.)

Means they don't like public domain books.

Scratch them from anything except original books. Which means they're in the same category as Scribd and Smashwords: "Dead End - Avoid."

And I now have to review/delete a lot of stuff from the book I was writing on how to publish and make your financial freedom with a home-publishing business (- as it was centered on public domain and PLR works.)

The only real route for public domain self-publishing (not original works) is the old one:

1. Build your book in LibreOffice, create your ebook in Writer2Epub, then proof using Calibre's editor and Sigil.

2. Publish through Lulu first, but don't distribute there. Get the free ISBN. Publish your hardcopy books there, so they can be matched up on .

3. Using a MAC, publish directly to iTunes. With or without a MAC, publish to Nook, GooglePlay, Amazon, and Kobo.

4. Nobody else is really useful at this point. The rest simply avoid public domain books like they are plague-ridden.

5. iAmplify is probably the only way to "bundle" anything, and they don't do epubs, just PDF's. You have to have a video, which can be a book trailer. They have a decent affiliate program, but you can also use JVZoo or PayDotCom, even Clickbank for this.

Too bad Leanpub is being so conservative. Means I lost about a week trying to publish there as a test. Like many, they seem to consider that public domain books have a lot of risks connected with them.  (Too bad, though - Leanpub otherwise has a great model for self-publishing.)

So, screw Leanpub. Like Smashwords, Lulu, and Kobo - they are all too uptight about the public domain scene to spend (much) time on.

(Sigh.)

There are now just 5 distributors worth any investment of time. The rest, frankly, suck. (And Kobo working its way to that other list quickly...)

Of course, that's if you're trying to earn a living with public domain and PLR books. If you want to sit down and crank out tons of original content, just get them up on Leanpub, then push through Lulu as an aggregator. Lastly, port them to GooglePlay. Spend most of your time writing and sending emails to your audience.

For public domain, use Lulu only for the ISBN and hardcopy versions. Itunes, Nook, Amazon, GooglePlay, and Kobo are all published to directly. So there's only 6. (OverDrive hasn't answered back, so I presume they are not taking indie publisher submissions at this time.) Five main distributors, really.

Hope you have better results than I have. Wish I'd been suspended a few days ago instead of wasting a whole week. But that's life.