The quizzes take no time to create; it’s so flexible.

Jay Heinrichs is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion. He’s also the former editor of National Wildlife magazine and Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, and group publisher of the Ivy League Magazine Network.

My business is built around my New York Times bestselling books on rhetoric, the art of persuasion. I wanted to create persuasion quizzes to make my books look like courses on rhetoric.

I used ProProfs Quiz Maker to devise persuasion quizzes. Though I originally created the quizzes as an extra and a marketing gimmick, high school teachers as well as college and law school professors began using the quizzes in their courses on English and rhetoric.

The quizzes take no time to create; they're just flexible enough. Best of all, for my purpose, the results can be shared with teachers and workshop managers — a big win for everyone.

My book, ‘Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion’, was published by Random House with a business-oriented audience in mind. But, after I began posting persuasion quizzes on ProProfs, educators caught the bug and started assigning the book for their classes. They liked that the quizzes helped them integrate the book in their courses.

In the first year (pre-ProProfs quizzes), the book sold a respectable 20,000 copies. Since then, more than 400,000 paper copies have been sold, with many more ebook downloads. I'm now developing quizzes for my latest book, How to Argue with a Cat. And I'm working up quizzes to help my clients in business and government use rhetoric in their presentations and proposals.