Ebook types
The interactive workbook
The format with the highest completion rate, for the simplest reason: a reader who has written something down has started, and people who start, finish.
What BookArc writes for this format
Self-paced, with exercises and reflection prompts.
- Chapters
- 10–15 chapters
- Default length
- 12 chapters · ~1,000 words each
- Typical book
- ~12,000 words
- Voice
- Non-fiction
- Example genre
- Self-Development / Workbook
- Credits
- 27 at these defaults, cover included
Who writes one
- Coaches turning a programme into something self-serve
- Course creators trying to move completion rates
- Authors adding a companion to an existing book
Worked through, not read
Each chapter teaches one small thing — no more than about a third of the chapter — and then puts the reader to work. Two exercises and a reflection prompt, each with a clear instruction and a worked example of what a good answer looks like, and each producing something they keep: a written answer, a list, a plan, a filled-in table.
The chapters are ordered so that what the reader produced in one is the raw material for the next. By the end, the exercises add up to one finished piece of work they made themselves.
Why it converts better than a guide
A guide gives somebody information they may act on later. A workbook makes them act now, in the book, and having done the first exercise they are no longer someone considering the thing — they are someone doing it badly and wanting help. That is a much shorter distance to a client.
A format where the file matters
A workbook is the one format where PDF beats EPUB decisively: it can be printed, written on, and the space left for answers survives. Anything the reader is meant to fill in is set as a block so it stays visible as space rather than collapsing into the prose.
If you are printing it, an 8.5 × 11 inch trim size gives people room to write. 6 × 9 does not.
Questions people ask
Can the exercises be printed and filled in?
Yes — export the PDF. The interior is typeset for print, and a workbook is the one book people genuinely want on paper.
How is this different from a how-to guide?
A guide is read and then applied. A workbook is applied while it is being read, and the reader ends up holding something they made.
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.
- 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.
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.