Everything you need to know

Readers' Verdict is an AI-powered manuscript feedback platform. You submit your writing — fiction, nonfiction, poetry, screenplay — and a panel of distinct reader personas reviews it. Each reader has their own tastes, biases, critical blind spots, and professional background. They read independently first, then react to each other in a jury deliberation. The result is genuinely divergent feedback, not a single analysis softened or sharpened in tone.

Most AI feedback tools run your manuscript through a single analysis and vary the tone. Readers' Verdict is architecturally different: each persona has named blind spots and contrarian mandates that produce real disagreement. One reader may love your dialogue and dismiss your structure; another may find your premise derivative but your character work exceptional. The jury dynamic — where readers explicitly react to each other's assessments — surfaces tensions that a single-voice critique cannot. You get a verdict, not a summary.

Each genre has six reader personas — professionals, enthusiasts, and critics with distinct backgrounds, reading philosophies, and critical priorities. A Romance jury might include an acquisitions editor, a romance blogger, a literary fiction reader who resists genre conventions, and a debut author. Each has a name, photo, tagline, and bio visible before you choose your jury. Their voices are consistent across every manuscript they read — if Rosalind Achterberg dislikes passive protagonists, she will tell you, every time.

You choose your genre and select up to six readers from that genre's jury pool. Upload your manuscript (Word, PDF, or plain text up to 200,000 words) or paste it directly. Each reader independently analyses your work against the dimensions most relevant to your genre — plot pacing, character depth, dialogue, structure, argument strength, and others. Then, in a second pass, each reader reads the other reviews and responds: agreeing, disagreeing, and revising their assessment. You receive each reader's final analysis, their letter grade, and a jury summary with the consensus grade.

Pass one is the independent read. Each reader analyses your manuscript on their own, without seeing what the others think. Pass two is the jury deliberation. After all independent reviews are in, each reader reads the full panel's assessments and responds — defending their position, revising it, calling out disagreements, or acknowledging where another reader changed their mind. The final analysis you receive is each reader's position after deliberation, which is richer and more honest than an uncontested first impression.

For a short story or excerpt (under 10,000 words), typically 1–3 minutes. A full novel (80,000–110,000 words) typically takes 2–4 minutes with a full jury of six readers. You can watch the jury deliberate in real time on the progress screen — readers come online one by one as they finish their independent pass.

You can upload .docx (Word), .txt, or paste your text directly into the editor. .doc files are also accepted. If your manuscript is in another format (PDF, Google Docs), export it to .docx or .txt first. The system extracts the raw text — formatting, images, and comments are not processed.

Fiction: Romance, Fantasy, Mystery/Thriller/Crime, Science Fiction, Young Adult, Horror, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Poetry, Children's Literature, and Screenplay. Nonfiction: True Crime and General Nonfiction (covering memoir, self-help, history, and instructional writing). Each genre has six dedicated reader personas. You can also choose Custom to assemble a jury from any genre.

Yes. On the genre selection screen, choose Custom to browse all available reader personas across every genre. You can mix a fantasy reader with a literary fiction reader and a nonfiction critic if that combination serves your work. The Custom option is particularly useful for genre-blending manuscripts or experimental work that doesn't fit neatly into one category.

Within a revision workflow, yes. When you submit a revised manuscript, the readers who reviewed your original explicitly reference their prior feedback — assessing what changed, what improved, and what issues remain unresolved. Readers who didn't review the original will read the prior reviews from other jury members and factor them into their assessment. Across unrelated submissions, readers do not carry memory — each new manuscript is a fresh read.

A Craft Reader evaluates your manuscript through the lens of writing technique. Their priorities are dimensions like prose style, sentence-level control, dialogue authenticity, point of view consistency, and narrative voice. They are the readers most likely to notice whether your language is doing real work — and most likely to call it out when it isn't. If a Craft Reader grades you harshly, the feedback will point toward how you are writing, not just what you are writing about.

A Market Reader evaluates your manuscript against the standards of the commercial publishing landscape. Their priorities are dimensions like reader engagement, pacing, marketability, and how well the work meets audience expectations for its category. They read the way an acquisitions editor or agent might — asking whether there is a clear audience for this book and whether the manuscript is likely to hold them. If a Market Reader grades you harshly, the feedback will point toward structural or commercial issues: unclear hooks, pacing problems, or a mismatch between the writing and its intended readership.

A Genre Enthusiast is a passionate, well-read fan of the specific genre you are writing in. Their priorities are dimensions like genre conventions, trope execution, world-building, and the expectations that dedicated readers of that genre bring to every book. They know the genre deeply — which means they will notice when you have broken a convention intentionally and when you have broken it by accident. If a Genre Enthusiast grades you harshly, the feedback will point toward how well your manuscript delivers on the promises your genre makes to its readers.

It depends on what kind of feedback you need right now. If you are early in the revision process and suspect the writing itself needs work, a panel weighted toward Craft Readers will give you the most concentrated technical feedback. If you are closer to submission and want to stress-test commercial viability, leaning toward Market Readers makes sense. That said, the most revealing verdicts usually come from a mixed jury. A manuscript that impresses a Craft Reader but loses a Market Reader has a different problem than one that satisfies Genre Enthusiasts but frustrates both others. The disagreements between reader types are often where the most useful insight lives — they surface the trade-offs in your writing that you may not have seen clearly yourself. For most writers, a balanced mix of all three types is the best default.

Pricing is based on manuscript length and number of readers, using tiered word-count bands — the rate per word drops as your manuscript gets longer. A small discount also applies for each additional reader beyond the first, and revisions are priced at half the standard rate.

Use the calculator below to see the exact cost for your manuscript. The full price is always shown before you submit — no surprises.

Yes. Every account gets one free pass: up to 5,000 words with a panel of three readers, at no charge. This is enough for a full short story, a detailed opening chapter, or a substantial excerpt — enough to experience the jury dynamic properly. After your free pass, submissions are priced at standard rates.

Yes — revisions are priced at 50% of the standard rate. When you submit a revised manuscript through the revision workflow, the discount is applied automatically. Using the same readers for your revision allows them to explicitly reference their prior feedback, which makes the revision analysis significantly more useful.

Each reader's full final analysis (500+ words), their letter grade (F through A+), and scores across the key dimensions for your genre. A jury summary identifies the consensus grade, the main points of agreement, and the sharpest points of divergence. You can download the complete results as a Word document (.docx) or plain text file. Your results are saved to your dashboard and accessible any time.

Yes. You can download your results as a formatted Word document or plain text file. The Word export includes the full jury report with all individual reviews, dimension scores, and the jury summary — formatted for readability and ready to share with a writing group, agent, or editor.

Yes — view a real sample verdict from a literary fiction short story (Glory v22, 6,935 words, 6 readers). You can browse all six jury analyses, dimension scores, and the jury summary to get a feel for the depth and format of feedback before submitting your own work. No account required.