Choosing a book type
Prose manuscripts versus layout books — coloring books, picture books, planners, recipe books, photo books, word searches and sudoku — and why the choice is hard to reverse.
When you start a book, the first question is what kind it is. There are two interior models, and they are genuinely different — not two skins on one editor.
Prose — a manuscript that flows
A novel, a memoir, a non-fiction book. The unit of authorship is the chapter, text flows from page to page, and the page count is estimated from a word count until you render the interior.
You get: the rich-text editor, outlines, the story codex, consistency checking, deep research, version history, book-wide find and replace, auto-draft, and audiobook narration.
Layout books — where the page is the unit
Seven presets, all sharing one page-designer:
| Preset | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Coloring book | Line-art designs, one per page, with optional colour guides |
| Picture book | Illustrated spreads with a few sentences of story per page |
| Planner | Weekly and monthly spreads, trackers, ruled and dotted pages |
| Recipe book | Photo, ingredients and method, with section openers and an index |
| Photo book | Full-bleed plates, facing pairs, section openers, caption pages |
| Word search | Puzzle grids generated from your word lists, plus an answer key |
| Sudoku | Grids from 4×4 to 16×16, generated from the pages themselves, plus an answer key |
Here the page is the unit and the page count is exact, because you made each page. You get a page plan, layout templates you can design yourself, AI page art, master-free furniture like page numbers and captions, and a preflight that checks each page against the printer's rules.
Which one
Ask what the reader turns. If they turn pages of text that continues, it is prose. If they turn pages that are each composed, it is a layout book — even if there are words on them.
A picture book is a layout book, not a short novel. A cookbook is a layout book. A poetry collection where every poem is set on its own page deliberately is closer to a layout book than to prose.
What to watch for
The book type is set when the book is created and is not a setting you can flip later. The two models store their contents differently — chapters of flowing text on one side, an ordered array of composed pages on the other — so there is nothing sensible to convert one into. If you pick wrong, start a new book.
The print format matters more for layout books, and some of it cannot be changed after you publish. Ink in particular: colour costs several times what black does per page, and it is not editable on a live listing. The premise screen for a layout book therefore leads with the print format rather than burying it. See Ink, paper and what it costs.
A picture book is the most constrained book most printers will make. At the classic 32 pages it can only be a paperback in premium colour — hardcover needs far more pages, and standard colour needs more too. The preset starts you in the one configuration that actually works, which is why its page count is a dropdown rather than a free number.