Ebook types
The how-to guide
The 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.
What BookArc writes for this format
Step-by-step instruction, beginning to competent.
- Chapters
- 10–12 chapters
- Default length
- 11 chapters · ~1,200 words each
- Typical book
- ~13,000 words
- Voice
- Non-fiction
- Example genre
- Practical Skills / How-To
- Credits
- 36 at these defaults, cover included
Who writes one
- Practitioners writing down a skill they already teach
- Authors building a non-fiction back catalogue
- Anybody whose inbox contains the same question five times
Why the order is the whole thing
The failure mode of a how-to book is a set of interchangeable articles with chapter numbers on them. You can tell within a minute: shuffle the chapters and nothing breaks.
This format is planned against that directly. Each chapter must depend on the one before it, the sequence follows how the work is really done rather than how it is catalogued, and each chapter is written assuming the reader can already do everything the earlier ones taught — so nothing is re-explained.
What is inside a chapter
- Subheadings, so it can be skimmed and returned to.
- The steps in the order they are performed, with what “done” looks like at each one.
- One concrete worked example with real specifics.
- The mistake a beginner makes here, named.
- A short takeaway the reader can act on today.
On length
This is the format most often written too long, because “complete” feels like a virtue. It is not: a guide somebody finishes beats a reference somebody abandons. See how long an ebook should be for the numbers.
Questions people ask
How is this different from the course format?
A guide is read; a course is worked through. The course format states a single learning objective per module and ends each one with a check-yourself task, which a guide does not.
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.
- Online CourseThe 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.
- 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.
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