If Reedsy Studio 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 Reedsy Studio 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 | Reedsy Studio | Your Book Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Where do I write? | Yes, free | 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? | Cover creator included | 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 Reedsy Studio 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 Reedsy Studio does well
Reedsy Studio's core writing and formatting is free, the typesetting output is genuinely professional, and the marketplace behind it is the best-vetted place to hire an editor in this industry. Note that Studio is not entirely free: Core is free, with Essential at $4.99/mo and Outlining at $7.99/mo.
The gap
Reedsy's editorial answer is to hire a human from the marketplace, which is excellent and costs £1,500–£4,800 for a developmental edit. If that is not the budget you have, there is nothing in between.
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
Use Reedsy Studio to write and format. Use the tools here for the editorial work you cannot afford to buy four times — then hire from the marketplace for the pass that genuinely needs a person, arriving with a much better draft and a smaller quote.
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 Reedsy Studio
Reedsy is unusual among these: it already shows you the price of the gap. The editor is free, and the marketplace next to it is where you would hire everything the editor does not do — which is most of what turns a draft into a book.
First, Initial Feedback for a fast read on what you have. A freelance first-reader report is £85–£215 for three chapters, £250–£600 for a full first read.
Second, Detailed Editorial Feedback across the whole manuscript. On the Reedsy marketplace the equivalent developmental edit runs £1,500–£4,800.
Third, Proofread, at £300–£800 with a person, before you take the file back to Reedsy to typeset and to its cover creator.
This is not an argument against hiring a human from that marketplace. It is an argument for knowing what the book needs before you brief one, so you are paying for the right pass.
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 Reedsy Studio?
- 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 Reedsy Studio cost?
- Core free; Essential $4.99/mo; Outlining $7.99/mo, 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?
- Initial Feedback, then the whole-book review. Reedsy makes hiring easy, so the thing worth having first is a clear idea of what you would be hiring someone to fix.
- 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.