Frequently Asked Questions

Yes — every part is editable. Lesson titles, slide text, narration scripts, bullet points, quiz questions, answer explanations, and lesson order. We strongly recommend reviewing every slide's narration before publishing. Most of what makes a course feel like you, as opposed to a generic AI output, is in those edits.

Not at the moment. CourseBud is built around the book-to-course generation path, not as a course hosting migration platform. If you already have a course running elsewhere and it's working, stay there — we're the right tool when you want to build a new course from a book you've written.

Yes — the process has two stages. First, CourseBud generates a course outline and pauses for your approval. You can rename modules and lessons, add or remove lessons, adjust summaries, and update the course title and description. Only after you approve the outline does the AI proceed to write the full lesson scripts, slides, and quizzes. This lets you shape the structure before the full generation runs.

After the AI finishes converting your book, you review and edit the outline, slides, and quizzes in the Author Studio. When you are satisfied, open the course editor and click Publish — the course goes live and can be listed publicly on CourseBud. You control whether it appears in the course directory or stays accessible only via a direct link. You can also see the public student experience in Covert-Ops: Mastering the Military Thriller, one of the live courses built on CourseBud.

Students can pay by credit or debit card (via Stripe) or PayPal — they choose at checkout. Payment goes directly to the author's connected payout account; CourseBud never holds the funds. The price is set by the author, and CourseBud takes no commission.

Free accounts can create one lifetime preview course; deleting it does not reset preview eligibility. Starter allows 1 AI-converted course, Growth 3, and Pro up to 10. Upgrading unlocks additional course slots immediately.

Yes — there is a one-time $199 setup fee per course that covers the AI conversion of your book (outline, slides, quizzes, and narration scripts). For your first course it is billed with your first subscription invoice; each additional course is unlocked with its own $199 checkout once its free preview is ready. Before you pay, CourseBud generates a free preview — a full outline plus the first 3 lessons — so you can see exactly what you are getting. The setup fee is non-refundable once the AI pipeline has processed your book.

If you would rather not handle the AI review and setup yourself, our $449 full-service option adds hands-on review and cleanup of your generated course, configuration, and publishing help from our team. It is offered through our partner SelfPublishing.pro and is entirely optional — you can always do it yourself for just the $199 setup fee.

Yes — every lesson includes a readable transcript. While a lesson is open, you can click "Show transcript" under any slide to read its narration text, or expand the "Full lesson transcript" panel at the bottom of the lesson to read all slides at once. You can also print the full transcript directly from the lesson page.

No. Upload your book and CourseBud builds a free preview: a full course outline plus the first 3 lessons with slides and quizzes. You can review and edit those lessons at no cost. Subscribe only when you are ready to unlock the remaining lessons, publish the course, and open enrollment to students.

Yes — if your book is in SelfPublishing.pro, CourseBud can pull it in automatically. On the new course page, your SelfPublishing.pro titles appear in a list; select one and the manuscript and cover image are imported for you without a separate file upload. Your CourseBud account just needs to be registered with the same email address you use at SelfPublishing.pro.

Yes. In the course editor you can set a Regular Price and an optional Sale Price. When a Sale Price is entered, students see the reduced amount at enrollment — the original price appears crossed out so the discount is clear. To end a sale, simply clear the Sale Price field and save.

Yes. When creating or editing your course, set the price to $0 and leave the sale price blank. Students can then enroll at no cost. Free enrollment still requires a CourseBud account so their progress is tracked, but there is no payment step.

As soon as your subscription is confirmed, CourseBud automatically picks up where the free preview left off and finishes generating all remaining lessons, slides, and quizzes for your book. You do not need to re-upload anything — the process continues in the background, and your course is ready to review and publish once it finishes.

Each lesson ends with a short quiz — score 60% or higher and the lesson is automatically marked complete. Manual completion is only available for lessons that don't have a quiz; if a lesson has a quiz, you need to pass it to complete that lesson. Your progress is saved automatically and tracked on your My Courses page.

Yes — open Analytics in your Author Studio to see your total and recent enrollments, your top courses, and your latest sign-ups at a glance. Each course also has its own Sales page, which you can download as a CSV, and a Students page showing each learner's progress and average quiz score.

Yes — if you have a coupon code, enter it in the box above the pricing plans before you click a plan button, and the discount applies to your first invoice (one use per customer). You can also enter a code at checkout when you unlock the full conversion for an additional course. Coupon codes do not apply to course purchases by students, since that payment goes entirely to the author.

Yes — click the chat bubble in the corner of any page to reach our support assistant right away. You can also reach us through the contact form for anything that needs a human follow-up.

Yes. You keep ownership of your book and the course content created from it. You give CourseBud permission to process, host, display, and deliver that content as needed to provide the service.

Students pay you directly through your connected Stripe or PayPal account, and CourseBud takes 0% of course revenue. Your payment provider's normal processing fees still apply.

Each plan has a per-course student cap based on trailing-12-month enrollments (Starter 50 per course, Growth 250 per course, Pro unlimited per course). When a course hits its cap, new enrollments are paused on that course and you'll see a prompt to upgrade. Existing students keep full access. Upgrading is one click and takes effect immediately with prorated billing.

Yes. Cancel from your account settings at any time — your subscription stays active through the end of the current billing period and will not renew. If you change your mind before the period ends, you can reactivate from the same page and keep your plan without interruption.

Yes — use the Annual toggle on the pricing section before checkout. Annual billing is $190 for Starter, $490 for Growth, or $990 for Pro, which is about two months free compared with monthly billing.

Yes. Students create a free CourseBud account so we can track their progress lesson-by-lesson, remember which slides they've completed, and save their quiz results. They do not need to pay CourseBud anything — only the course price you set, which goes directly to you.

Yes — once an enrolled student has completed every published lesson in a course, they can leave a 1-5 star rating and a short written review. Reviews (and the average rating) appear publicly on the course page, and a student can update their review later if they want to change it.

CourseBud currently uses one professional default narration voice. In the lesson editor, click "Preview narration" on any saved slide to hear it; custom voice selection and voice cloning are not currently available.

CourseBud accepts PDF, EPUB, DOCX, and TXT manuscripts up to 50 MB. ISBN or Amazon lookup can prefill the title and cover, but you still need the manuscript unless you import it directly from SelfPublishing.pro.

Yes — on the new course page, use the ISBN or Amazon URL tab to auto-fill your course's starting title and cover art from public book data. This is a convenience for the title and cover only; you'll still need to upload your manuscript file to generate the course, unless it's imported automatically from SelfPublishing.pro.

For a typical 200-page non-fiction book, the full pipeline — parsing, outline generation, slide generation, and quiz generation — runs in about 10 to 20 minutes. You see a live progress page and can step away while it runs. Longer or denser books can take up to 45 minutes.

CourseBud accepts manuscript files up to 50 MB and samples across very long books when building the outline. Multi-volume textbooks or large reference works may produce a more focused result when split into separate courses.