The read
Three readers, one per discipline.
Consistent across every title on the platform, so a house's second book is read by the same standard as its first.
Who reads what
Alex — developmental
Structure, story and character: the whole-book read that answers whether the manuscript works.
Sam — line
Prose at the sentence level: rhythm, clarity, voice — preserved, not overwritten.
Jordan — copy
Consistency, usage and mechanics, with every flag citing the place it was found.
Each prepares; none decides
An editor at the house reviews every read, interrogates it, and decides what reaches the author. The system holds no opinion an editor has not approved.
This is the part most easily mistaken for modesty. It is a design constraint: there is no path by which a read becomes an instruction to an author without a person at your house putting their name to it.
Consistency, and why it matters more than brilliance
The same reader applies the same standard to every title you send. An editorial opinion that varies with who happened to pick the book up is hard to build a list on; one that is boringly consistent can be calibrated against your own editors once and then trusted.
Put a manuscript through it
The fastest way to judge us is the product’s own: send one manuscript through the read and compare the result with your editors’ view of the same book. Write to us — a person reads every enquiry — and we will also send the technical specification: what the system does, how it is built, and what it does not yet have. A specification that contains only good news is a brochure.
publishers@authorslab.ai