What it costs
What manuscript assessment / outline critique costs — and what you're actually buying
An outline critique costs £150–£400 and a full manuscript assessment £400–£900. The economics are absurdly in your favour: a structural problem found in an outline costs a fortnight, and the same problem found in a finished draft costs six months.
What good looks like
- A written report, not a conversation
- A clear statement of what the book currently is, to compare with what you intended
- Specific structural recommendations in priority order
- Honesty about whether the idea is commercially viable
A separate free preview: A free outside view of your own pages
A separate editorial preview of written pages; it does not review a book plan or outline. Send up to 5,000 words. You get back what the draft appears to be doing to somebody who wasn't there when you wrote it, the strongest thing in it named, the exact place a reader starts to drift, and three revision priorities in order.
A separate editorial preview of written pages; it does not review a book plan or outline. An AI-assisted read of your own pages. Not a human edit, not a line edit, and not a scored report.
What you are actually buying
A manuscript assessment reads what exists — an outline, a proposal, or a partial draft — and tells you whether the structure will hold before you write the rest of it.
Why it costs that
An outline critique is priced on reading a plan and sample chapters and writing a considered response — a few hours of an experienced editor's time rather than the weeks a full manuscript takes. That is why it is so much cheaper than a developmental edit, and why the economics are absurdly in your favour: a structural problem found in an outline costs a fortnight, and the same problem found in a finished draft costs six months.
How to spend less
There is not much to save here — it is already the cheapest editorial intervention available. What there is to gain is doing it at all: this is the purchase almost nobody makes, because at outline stage the book still feels like it might work out on its own.
What good looks like
- A written report, not a conversation
- A clear statement of what the book currently is, to compare with what you intended
- Specific structural recommendations in priority order
- Honesty about whether the idea is commercially viable
Questions to ask them
- What will the report cover and how long is it?
- Have you worked in this genre?
- Do I get a follow-up conversation?
Red flags
- Feedback that is entirely encouraging
- No sample report available in any form
- A quote that does not depend on length
Honestly
A plan that passes is not a promise the book will work. Plenty of well-structured plans produce lifeless books, and some brilliant books have indefensible structures. It tells you the shape is sound, not that the book is.
About Your Book Pro
Your Book Pro is a book-writing platform built in Britain. Start with an idea, notes, half a draft, a podcast, or a finished manuscript, and use our purpose-built AI tools for planning, feedback, editing, proofreading, cover designs, and to create print-ready files. Writing is totally free: you can type, upload or speak your book as much as you like, and use only the editing tools you need with Plus, or go unlimited with Pro.
Produce world-class drafts at the fraction of the cost of hiring a human editorial team.
Every account starts with 1,000 welcome credits, and a plain export of your own words is free.
These prices are here to be used, not to sell you something — brief a freelancer with them, sanity-check a quote, or work out what you actually need. Where Your Book Pro changes the arithmetic, the page says so; where it does not, it says that too.
A plan that passes is not a promise the book will work. Plenty of well-structured plans produce lifeless books, and some brilliant books have indefensible structures. It tells you the shape is sound, not that the book is.
What it costs
| What you are buying | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Outline or synopsis critique | £150–£400 | ~4–9 hrs at CIEP £42.66 |
| Full manuscript assessment with report | £400–£900 | ~10–20 hrs at CIEP £42.66 |
CIEP suggested minimum rates effective 1 March 2026; Books.by; publishing.co.uk; The Ghostwriters Agency. Dated 9 September 2026.
Test your plan
Email me my free review linkQuestions people ask
- What is an outline critique?
- An experienced editor reads your plan and sample chapters and tells you where the structure will cause problems, before you write 80,000 words into it.
- How much does it cost?
- £150–£400 for an outline and sample chapters. A full manuscript assessment is £400–£900.
- Is it worth it for a novel?
- Especially for a novel, and even more for non-fiction, where the argument is the architecture.
- What do I send?
- The outline, three sample chapters, and a short note on what you already suspect is wrong. The last part saves you money.