Tool
A fast first read on what you have so far
Everyone close to you is compromised. Family are kind, friends are kind and worried about the friendship, and writing groups are sometimes a mutual encouragement society. This is the first honest read on what you actually have, with no social pressure in it.
What it does, precisely
- Reads what exists, however partial, without asking you to finish first
- Says what is working, specifically enough to be useful
- Says what is not, without softening it into uselessness
- Tells you whether to keep going — which is what you were asking
A free outside view of your own pages
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.
An AI-assisted read of your own pages. Not a human edit, not a line edit, and not a scored report.
What it does
Deliberately fast and deliberately early. Three chapters is enough. The point is to catch the fundamental problem while changing course is still cheap.
What this looks like in your genre
memoir. The first honest read on a memoir answers the question nobody close to you will: is this interesting to someone who does not love you? It reports what the opening promises, whether the narrator is trustworthy, and whether a reader outside the family has enough to hold on to.
business. The first read on a business book answers whether the claim is arguable and whether the opening reaches the reader's problem before it reaches your CV. Both are quick to diagnose and expensive to discover after a full draft.
childrens. A short text can be read completely in a first pass, which makes early feedback unusually valuable here. It reports whether the age band is consistent, whether the child drives the story, and whether the thing is funny or moving in the way you intended.
fiction. The first read on a novel is about the opening, because that is where agents, browsing readers and sample-readers all decide. It reports what the first pages promise, whether the voice holds, and whether a reader would turn to chapter four.
non fiction. The first read tells you whether the book knows what it is arguing and whether a reader who is not you can follow it. Non-fiction drafts frequently make sense only to their authors, and that is invisible from inside.
However you write
Three chapters is enough, from anywhere. Typed, dictated, or the first three chapters of something you wrote years ago and want an honest read on before deciding whether to finish it.
The mistake: asking people who love you
The question underneath most requests for feedback is not 'is this good'. It is 'is this worth continuing'. Nobody wants to spend another six months on something that was never going to work.
The people close to you cannot answer this. Not because they are dishonest, but because the cost of telling you is higher than the cost of encouraging you, and they will unconsciously do the arithmetic. You will get 'I really enjoyed it', which is true and useless. The value of an impartial first read is entirely that it has nothing to lose by being accurate.
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.
One rule shapes all of it. Your words are stored as Exact Text and are never overwritten. Every suggestion arrives attached to a place in your manuscript, and nothing changes until you accept it. Where most AI tools quietly rewrite you into their own register, this one shows you the change and waits. Even the automatic clean-up pass is held to a length check — if it drifts too far from what you actually wrote, the edit is thrown away and you keep your own words. The editorial standards behind the feedback are our own, written for books and specific to your genre, not a general chatbot answering in a good mood.
Initial Feedback is deliberately fast and deliberately early — the point is catching a fundamental problem while changing course is still cheap. Included in Pro.
A first read is an impression, not an analysis. For the structural diagnosis, that is Detailed Editorial Feedback.
Where it stops
A first read is an impression, not an analysis. If you want the structural diagnosis — why something is not working and what to do about it — that is Detailed Editorial Feedback, and it is a different job.
What this replaces
| What you are buying | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Manuscript critique or first-reader report | £85–£215 for three chapters; £250–£600 for a full first read | See /costs/initial-feedback for the full breakdown and sources. |
Read what I have
Review my opening