Zen of Zig on Gumroad and Why I Left Leanslop

A few years back I wanted to definitely learn me some Zig for real. You know, before that I fooled around with some examples, some stuff, but almost all my "system" and "gamedev" code was still C/C++. I tried Rust, and even made an entire project professionaly with it - but it was just hard to enjoy. I tried Go - it never grew on me. Zig was a bit different. So I looked for a real book. And I mean real nice when I say real.

Even then, I searched for "zig programming" or "zig book" on Amazon and, more broadly, on the internet, and a few obvious AI-generated books appeared. But those were super-obviously gibberish AI slop, so thank God I didn't spend any money on them.

Other books I found were either a bit dry - had kinda the taste of official documentation made into a book - or would start with the typical "Hello world" in the first chapter and then, in the second chapter, suddenly make a giant leap with "Create your HTTP server from scratch".

Whoohoho. Easy dude. In my 20-year pro career, I've never had to build an HTTP server from scratch. Of course, I'm laughing at my own skill issues - the case is legit, but me personally, I was looking for something more memorable, more about the language, and not as advanced from the start. Let's leave the coding of Skynet for later (maybe) - I want something that would make it easier to learn a new programming language and make it fun. Not projects for now. Of course there's Ziglings too - and it's great. There are many great ways to learn and enjoy programming. I fully understand some people like that more.

Anyway. I was learning and enjoying the nice things I could appreciate in Zig - achieving again that focus state while coding. But then (yes, I obsess over some things a lot): there still wasn't THAT Zig book I was looking for, even though the language (and some resources) were great - what if - what if there was a person somewhere, just like me, who wanted to learn Zig the way I wanted to learn it. Well - that person at the beginning was me, of course - but maybe I could make it for someone else.

Wait, but maybe that person had never programmed before, just like me when I read my first C book. C can be complicated, but it can also be your first programming language, so Zig could be someone's first language - so the "complicated" concepts would have to be explained carefully and even left for later volumes (and that's where the idea of the series comes from). Volumes - because I really get tired when reading a massive book that wants to explain (a la LMM) everything in the same text.

Also - if someone loves learning from drier docs - there is always the official documentation. As I learned, I made notes - the notes grew into a doc - and that was the birth of Zen of Zig. In the end, it became more about my personal experience with the language, the narrative layer to make the small examples less dry. The first volume is only about the language - return to the basics. And of course, the first volume is free to read online at zenofzig.com/book, and you can buy it to support the project (now at https://zenofzig.gumroad.com/l/zenofzig )

The language itself is a work in progress. There are breaking changes and deprecations, which is not ideal for a printed book - but as there are online platforms, it can be published and updated as many times as needed.

That's where my relationship with Leanpub started. A year ago or so, there were 2 books about Zig on their shelves: Zig Language (Reco) and Introduction to Zig a project-based book (Pedro Faria). I published Zen of Zig there. That period of human authors publishing there lasted for some time: through a few updates of the Zig language. I wasn't selling much, but as I offered the book for free on zenofzig.com, every sale was sincere support for my work and a vote to keep learning, updating, and writing the next volumes.

A week ago, after the last stable Zig update (0.17), I uploaded the latest changes in the first volume. I went to check if everything was fine and took a look at Leanpub's "Zig shelf" - and well... well, well. What have we got here?

There were 4 more "Zig" books. 3 of them by the same author - "Steve publications" - and another one by "Asian Publishing House". Nice. Not sus at all.

"Steve Publications" already had 420 books published. Wow - such a workhorse. I took a look at his photo which screamed "I'm a cheap AI-generated image)", his "bio" and, of course it was sloppy sloppity slop. And the book's excerpts: sloppititiy sloppfull sloppififificient all over the place.

I found the Leanpub policy on AI slop (Webarchive link). It's pretty clear; even they say at the end: "We do very much encourage the use of AI by authors who are open to doing so. However, authors who use AI should make sure that the resulting work they publish is human-curated and of good quality." I read that as "we do encourage translating with AI or whatever, but not generating 400 books". But that's just me.

Hello

I'm Omer, author of Zen of Zig.

This "author" of 420 books is obviously AI-generated:

Even the photo of "Steve" and the "bio" are flagged by ZeroGPT as 99% and 96% AI-generated respectively.

Thanks

Hi Omer,

Thanks for reaching out about this!

While obvious AI slop itself is not permitted on Leanpub, Leanpub is a self-publishing platform, and we give authors and publishers a lot of freedom to try various approaches.

This publisher in particular is open about their use of AI on their profile page.

"We believe readers deserve to know how our books are created. Most of our authors are not native English speakers, so we use AI to help translate, proofread manuscripts, fix grammar, improve sentence structure and make technical explanations easier to read. AI is used as an editing tool only. It does not replace the research, technical knowledge or hands-on experience behind our books. Some of our authors also prefer to remain anonymous for privacy or professional reasons. In those cases, we publish their work under a different name. The author's name may be different, but the quality of the content and our review process remain the same."

People are allowed to use pseudonyms on our platform, and since this group is quite open about their process, their books are "good enough", and they don't seem to pretend that "Steve" is anything other than basically a branding avatar, we currently consider them to be ok.

Thanks again for reaching out about this.

Kind Regards,

The Leanpub Team

So it's "good enough" then?
As a human author, that is not good enough for me. Because I don't generate books. I write them.

"They're open about it"? Let me see:
"Steve is a technology professional with more than 20 years of experience in software development"
"Every book is written, reviewed and maintained by experienced technology professionals, with contributions from our private technical community of more than 420 engineers and researchers."

No "420 engineers" are writing in some foreign language and translating it into English while poor Steve helps them out with the translations.

You know that, right? Right?

If someone searches for a Zig book on Leanpub, there are several AI-generated books from "Steve" and another from "Asian Group". Those two "authors" have dozens and hundreds of books, and there will eventually be thousands of AI-slop books. Leanpub is already ranking those slop books on Google above my book.

And most importantly, as an author, I don't want to appear in the same place as AI-generated books.

I really beg you. Please reconsider.
Because right now Leanpub is really close to becoming "Leanslop".

Thanks,
Omer

Hi again

Just take a look at this example.

Ollaya is a recent project. Super recent - only about three weeks old or so:
https://github.com/ollaya-dev/ollaya/graphs/commit-activity

One of Steve's 420 engineers already wrote a 242-page book about it just 5 days after the first commit.
"This book is 100% complete. Last updated on 2026-10-11"

Hi,

Thank you for your candid replies. We permit a wide range of book projects, and that includes books written with AI tools, as long as the resulting books are not AI Slop.

In fact, quickly producing a book that helps people learn a new and changing technology is one of Leanpub's founding ideas. AI tools can help with that in a variety of ways.

Our openness to change and experimentation with technology has always meant that Leanpub is not the right fit for everyone, which is one reason we make it easy to close your account with one click here (link)

You can also just close your published book with one click here (link)

Kind Regards,

The Leanpub Team

(I sent them a screenshot of their own policy)

By then, I had already decided to move to Gumroad. A few days later, when I checked again to see if the AI-generated Steve was banned, there were already 423 books on Steve's profile. And one was about cancer. Written by "Dr. Natalie Kim". I guess Steve is helping out the doctors now, too.

I mean, it's quite awful to generate hundreds of books and bury the real ones. It's one thing to flood the place with fake authors writing about Zig, C, Java, or Claude, but to generate books about cancer... Think about it: some people will desperately look for a cure for themselves and their loved ones - and they will find that AI slop, and who knows what could happen. It's beyond disgusting.

So I had to write to them again.

Your "good enough" is getting grotesque and dangerous.

Maybe it's already time to contact the authorities and the media.

They removed that book the next day. Here is the link to the Web Archive so you can see I'm not making this shit up: https://web.archive.org/web/20261002155914/https://leanpub.com/understandingcancer.

After the "media and the authorities" warning, they removed the "medical" book but did not ban the account. And they won't do it. They don't care, and the AI slop will make them money. And Leanpub is definitely Leanslop now. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and to spend their money as they want, but I wouldn't buy a book from Leanslop ever again.

That was the end of our interaction - at least for now. I suppose they just wanted me to shut up about this issue and go away - hence the link in their mail to cancel my account. They are, as we say in Spain, "Fuerte con los debiles. Débil con los poderosos".

Hey - but what fun would that be? Zen of Zig stays on Leanpub, now at the much higher price of €100 (don't buy it there, please - on Gumroad it's only €39.90), pointing to Gumroad (https://zenofzig.gumroad.com/l/zenofzig) while briefly explaining why I left Leanslop - that God-forsaken slop-infected place.

Of course, that won't last. Hey, but they still owe me money too. We'll see. And yes, I know - everything is slopified nowadays - but at least Gumroad is not a book auto-publishing place with an auto-ignored anti-AI slop policy.

Zen of Zig on Gumroad and Why I Left Leanslop

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