If PodToBook works for you, keep it. This is not a page asking you to switch. It is about the gap between finishing a draft and publishing one — the structural read, the beta read, the editing sequence, the proofread, the cover — and how to fill it without moving your manuscript anywhere permanently.
For PodToBook users
What sits where
Not a scorecard. A map of which tool answers which question, so you can tell what you are missing rather than which is 'better'.
| The question | PodToBook | Your Book Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Where do I write? | No — it converts recordings | You can, but you don't have to |
| Is my plan any good? | No | Plan Feedback, and the Book Coach free with no account |
| Does the book work? | No | Detailed Editorial Feedback across the whole manuscript |
| How will readers react? | No | Beta Reader — three reader types, whole book |
| Is it consistent and clean? | No | Proofread and Book Dictionary, checked against your own conventions |
| Could this get me sued? | No | Safety Screening — flags exposure so you know what to take to a solicitor |
| Cover and blurb? | No | Generate a Cover and Back-Cover Blurb |
| Can I keep using both? | Yes | Yes — upload from anywhere, export again, free forever |
A structural read of your first three chapters
Bring three chapters from PodToBook and we'll email back a real structural read — the through-line, where attention drops, and the two things to fix first. Free, and nothing moves permanently.
What PodToBook does well
PodToBook does one thing and does it fast: it converts podcast episodes into a manuscript draft, at $349 for one manuscript of up to 15 episodes and $997 for three of up to 45.
The gap
Speed is the offer, and the output is an automated draft. What it cannot do is find the through-line across ninety episodes, tell you which of your recurring ideas is actually the book, or show you where you have said the same thing nineteen times in slightly different words.
That gap is where £2,500–£6,000 normally goes: a developmental edit at £1,500–£4,800, a copy-edit at £800–£1,600, a proofread at £400–£800, a cover at £250–£800. It is also the reason a great many finished drafts never become books.
How to add the missing half without moving house
Themes from Bulk Audio reads the whole archive at once and reports what the material is actually about before anything is drafted — which is the step that decides whether the book works. Then transcription, structure, editing and publishing preparation follow in order.
Plus lets you upload a manuscript you wrote anywhere, run whichever tool you actually need, and export it again. That is what makes keeping both tools a real option rather than a polite fiction: your book does not have to move house to get edited. A plain export of your own words is free forever.
Where to start, coming from PodToBook
A transcript is not a book. It is the raw material for one, and the step between the two is the step nothing in an audio pipeline performs: deciding what the archive is actually about.
First, Themes from Bulk Audio. Upload the archive — up to fifty hours — and get back the themes genuinely running through it, the episodes worth starting from, and the places you have said the same thing nineteen times. A research assistant or developmental editor doing this by hand is £1,000–£2,500 for forty hours of recordings.
Second, Plan Feedback on the chapter spine that comes out of it, before you commit to shaping two hundred episodes around it. £150–£400 for an outline critique.
Third, Detailed Editorial Feedback once there is a draft, because a book assembled from episodes has a characteristic fault: it repeats, and the repetition is invisible to the person who recorded it. £1,500–£4,800 with a developmental editor.
If you need the audio transcribed rather than summarised, human transcription runs £60–£150 per audio-hour.
What Your Book Pro is
Your Book Pro is a British book-writing platform. You bring a book — an idea, a folder of notes, half a draft, or a finished manuscript written somewhere else — and it gives you the editorial process a publisher would run: a plan, structured feedback, a simulated beta read, a line edit, a proofread, a cover, a blurb and a print-ready file. You can type it, upload it or speak it. The tools sit in one place and work on the same manuscript, so the feedback compounds instead of arriving as twelve disconnected opinions.
Every account starts with 1,000 welcome credits that never expire. A whole-book structural review costs 600 of them, so the first one is free. credit packs are there when you need more.
And the limits are stated on every tool page: real beta readers tell you whether they would have bought it; a designer who knows your shelf will outsell a generated cover; a solicitor is the answer when a book names living people.
Upload a manuscript written anywhere
Run a whole-book review
Email me the readQuestions people ask
- Do I have to stop using PodToBook?
- No. Upload a manuscript, run the passes it needs, export it again and carry on where you were. The export is free forever.
- How much does PodToBook cost?
- $349 one manuscript / up to 15 episodes; $997 three / up to 45, as published in September 2026. Prices move — check before deciding.
- Will my formatting survive the round trip?
- Heading hierarchy and chapter order are preserved, and import diagnostics show you what was found before anything is processed. Complex layout is best applied at the end, in your formatting tool.
- What should I run first?
- Themes from Bulk Audio. Everything else assumes you know what the book is about, and with an archive that is the thing you do not yet know.
- Is this cheaper than hiring an editor?
- Substantially — and it is not a replacement for one on every book. The honest use is to fix what you can here first, which makes a human editor's quote smaller if you still want one.