Ebook types
The online course, written as a book
The longest non-fiction format here, and the most structured: modules grouped into units, each with one objective phrased as something the learner will be able to do.
What BookArc writes for this format
Modular training, with objectives for each module.
- Chapters
- 15–20 chapters
- Default length
- 17 chapters · ~1,100 words each
- Typical book
- ~19,000 words
- Voice
- Non-fiction
- Example genre
- Professional Training / Education
- Credits
- 54 at these defaults, cover included
Who writes one
- Course creators who need the written spine before recording anything
- Trainers turning a workshop into something that sells while they sleep
- Consultants productising a methodology
One objective per module, and it has to be a verb
The planning instruction is specific about this: every module has ONE learning objective, stated as something the learner will be able to do — not “understand” or “be aware of”. That single constraint is what stops a course being a lecture series.
Modules are grouped into three or four units that build, and a later module may assume every earlier objective has been met and must not restate it. The course ends with the learner able to complete a whole piece of real work unaided.
The check-yourself task
Each module closes with two or three questions or a small task proving the objective was met. It is the cheapest completion-rate intervention there is, and it is the thing most written courses leave out.
Why write the course as a book at all
Three reasons, and the third is the one people miss. It is the spine you record video against. It is a second product at a different price for people who will never buy a course. And it is findable — a course platform is invisible to search in a way a book is not. More on that on the course creators page.
Questions people ask
Can I use this instead of recording videos?
Some buyers prefer reading, and a written course sells at a book price to an audience that would never buy a video course. Most people do both, and this is the part that makes the recording fast.
The other five formats
- Lead MagnetThe shortest book worth publishing: a specific problem, solved completely, read in half an hour and given away for an email address.
- How-To GuideThe workhorse non-fiction format. Its whole value is in the ordering — chapters arranged the way the work is actually done, not the way a syllabus lists it.
- Fiction NovelThe only fiction format here, and the one where continuity does the most work — because a novel that contradicts itself in chapter nineteen is a novel nobody finishes.
- Research ReportThe format for people whose credibility is the product. Structured like a real research document — and instructed, explicitly, never to invent a citation.
- Interactive WorkbookThe format with the highest completion rate, for the simplest reason: a reader who has written something down has started, and people who start, finish.
Write the book you keep meaning to write.
Describe it in one sentence. BookArc plans the chapters, writes every one of them and designs the cover. 30 credits free, no card.