Stage 1 of 6 · Editorial Review
The Editorial Review: An Editorial Letter on Your Whole Book
The Editorial Review is Stage 1 of Edith's six, and the only one sold on its own. She reads your entire manuscript, up to 150,000 words, before she says a word. Then she writes you an editorial letter on the whole book and sets out the overview points behind it, which you discuss with her one at a time. It starts free: she reads your first 10,000 words and writes you the letter on your opening, no credit card needed. The whole-book read is $15, it is yours to keep, and it is credited toward the complete edit if you continue.
In short
An editorial letter is a written, whole-book assessment of a manuscript: the strengths worth protecting, what is holding the book back, and where to start. Edith's Editorial Review is that letter on your entire novel, followed by a point-by-point discussion, for $15. It is the same job a freelance editor calls an editorial assessment, a manuscript evaluation, or a manuscript critique. The $15 is credited toward the $249 complete edit.
On a phone? Edith works on your computer. We’ll email you a link.
Email me the link to start
Edith reads your first 10,000 words and writes you an editorial letter, no credit card needed. The whole book, with every point open to discuss, is $15. Never used to train anything, and yours to delete.
What an editorial letter is
An editorial letter is what an editor writes after reading a whole manuscript and before touching a page of it. It is addressed to the author. It says, in prose, what the book is doing well, what is getting in its way, and what the editor would do first. It is honest by definition: a letter that only praises is a blurb.
Freelance editors sell this under several names. An editorial assessment or manuscript evaluation is a letter with no notes on the page. A manuscript critique is the same thing from a different tradition, often a little more informal. A manuscript assessment is the term you will see more often in the UK. All of them are the read-and-report stage that comes before a developmental edit, and they exist because it makes no sense to start marking up pages until author and editor agree on what the book is trying to be.
Edith's letter covers the developmental and the structural read together: whether the story works, and whether it is built in the right order. That is deliberate. Those two questions are tangled in every real manuscript, and a letter that separates them reads as two half-letters. What follows the letter is the part a freelancer's assessment does not include: a discussion, point by point, until you and she have settled what the book needs. Those settled positions are what developmental editing and structural editing then work from, so nothing in the later stages arrives without you having already agreed to it.
It is not a number. There is no grade, no bar chart, no percentage. If you have tried a tool that hands back a figure and left you no wiser about what to change, why a critique is not a number explains why we will not do that.
Who it is for, and when
Anyone with a finished draft who wants one honest read before spending real money. That includes the first-time novelist who cannot tell whether the book is any good, the self-publishing author who cannot justify a human editor per title, the experienced writer who wants the obvious problems found before a paid editor sees them, and the writer who drafted with help and now wants a straight read from something that will add nothing to the book.
It comes first. Before a developmental edit, before beta readers if you like, certainly before any sentence-level work. It answers the question every other decision depends on: where does this book actually stand? If you are asking whether the draft is ready for an editor at all, this is the cheapest way to find out, and how to tell if your novel is ready for an editor has the signs to look for first. The Review is the right place to start when:
- You have finished the draft and the only feedback so far is "I loved it."
- You want to know what to fix first, in plain language, before you revise again.
- You are deciding whether to spend on a human editor and want the big issues named before you do.
- You have been burned by flattery, from readers or from a chatbot, and want the truth.
- You want to try Edith before committing to the complete edit.
- Before
Your finished draft
- This stage
Editorial Review
- After
From a sample editorial letter
Dear author,
Now the harder truth. For the first hundred pages I knew exactly what Mara wanted. Somewhere around the midpoint, I stopped knowing. The plot keeps moving, but her wanting goes quiet, and a novel can survive almost anything except a protagonist who stops wanting on the page. I don't think you lost the thread; I think you buried it under event. We'll dig it back out together.
Edith
Overview point · to talk through
The middle loses Mara's want. For a hundred pages her goal is the engine of the book. After the midpoint it goes quiet under plot. Let's find the exact page it slips and put her wanting back on the page, so the second half pulls as hard as the first.
What the read covers
What it is not for: an unfinished manuscript, or a book you want written for you. Edith reviews a completed draft and writes nothing into it.
Before writing a word, Edith reads the whole manuscript, up to 150,000 words, and builds her own working notes on it: who the characters are and what each one wants, what happens in each chapter, where the promises are made and where they are kept or dropped. She also writes down how the book sounds, so that the later stages can protect it. Then she writes the letter. It covers:
- The whole arc. Does the story climb, turn, and land? Does the middle hold? Does the ending answer the question the opening asked?
- The characters, and whether they track. Does each one want something, and does the wanting stay on the page? Do they change in ways the book has earned? Do they stay themselves from chapter one to the end?
- The structure. Is the book built in the right order? Where does a scene arrive too early or too late? Where does the reader learn something before the character does, and should they?
- Pacing. Where the book rushes the moments that cost the characters most, and where it lingers on the ones that cost nothing.
- The promises the opening makes. Every first chapter promises a kind of book. She reads for whether the last chapter keeps that promise.
How the discussion works
The order of the letter is honest-first, not harsh-first. She names the strengths to protect, specifically, because a revision that does not know what is working will damage it. Then what is holding the book back, in plain language, with the reason. Then where to start. She does not pad it with praise to make it easier to take, and she does not write about how the draft got written; the read is about whether the story works. An AI book editor that gives honest feedback, not flattery is about why that matters, and how to get honest feedback on your novel is about how rare it is.
Beside the letter sit its overview points: each one a single argument the letter makes, labelled by the kind of edit it belongs to. You take them one at a time. Open a point and Edith says concretely what she means, with reference to the page, and you reply. Up to 10 replies each.
You can agree, disagree, or settle it somewhere she did not propose. If you disagree, say why; she checks the page before she argues back, and she will change her position if you are right. When a point is settled, it is marked agreed and written down. Those agreed positions become the notes of Stages 2 and 3, so the developmental and structural edits begin from a shared understanding rather than a fresh argument.
The letter itself is downloadable and yours to keep, whatever you decide next. If you stop after the Review, you leave with the letter and the discussion, and nothing else is charged. You can read a complete sample letter, with its overview points and one discussion, on the sample page.
What happens after the letter
Two things, and you choose which. The first is nothing: you take the letter, revise on your own, and come back if and when you want. Plenty of authors will do exactly that, and the letter is written to be enough on its own to start a revision from.
The second is the complete edit. If the letter earns your trust, the positions you agreed in the discussion become the notes of Stage 2, the developmental edit, and then Stage 3, the structural one. From there the edit works down through the prose: line editing, copyediting, and a final proofread, each stage building on what you settled in the one before, and each with a revision round included. Your decisions are carried forward the whole way, and so is the description of how your book sounds, refreshed from each draft you upload. Nothing you agreed in the letter has to be argued twice.
Either way, what you have at the end of Stage 1 is the same: an honest, specific read of your entire book, and a set of positions you have thought through with an editor rather than received from one.
How it compares
Three ways to get a whole-book assessment, described by shape. AI critique reports, the category we compare in Edith vs Inkshift and Edith vs Marlowe, read the whole book and return a document. The difference is what happens after it arrives.
| With a human editor | AI critique reports | With Edith | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it reads | Your whole manuscript | Your whole manuscript, in one pass | Your whole manuscript, up to 150,000 words, in one pass |
| What you get | An editorial letter, several pages | A report you read alone | An editorial letter plus overview points you discuss one at a time |
| Talk it through | Sometimes, a call or an email exchange | No | Yes, up to 10 replies on each point, until it is settled |
| What comes next | A separate developmental edit, quoted separately | Buy another report | The agreed positions become the notes of Stages 2 and 3 |
| Turnaround | Weeks, after a wait for a slot | Minutes | Minutes |
| Cost | Quoted per project or per word; varies widely by editor | Per report | $15, credited toward the $249 complete edit |
What it costs, exactly
The first step is free: Edith reads your first 10,000 words and writes you the letter on your opening, with the points she would raise, one per account and no credit card needed. It is the closest thing to free book editing that is honest about what it is. The Editorial Review on the whole book is $15. That covers the full read, the editorial letter, and the overview discussion, with the letter yours to keep. You can get a full refund any time until your letter is delivered; after that it is not refundable, because the letter is the product.
If you continue, the $15 is credited toward the complete edit, so all six stages cost $234 more, never $249 on top. Two revision rounds per stage are included in the package. There is no subscription and nothing recurring; the price is per book. Full detail is on the pricing page.
What the letter is not: a promise about publication, sales, or reviews. It is a promise that you will get an honest, specific, whole-book read you can act on. What you do with it is yours to decide.
For comparison, a human editorial assessment is quoted per project or per word and varies widely by editor. The Editorial Freelancers Association publishes rate guidance for the editorial services that follow it, and a full developmental edit of a novel commonly runs $2,000 to $4,000. The Review is built to come before that decision, not to replace it.
Sources:Editorial Freelancers Association, editorial rates (opens in a new tab)Reedsy, how much editing costs (opens in a new tab)
The guarantee. If you buy the complete edit upfront and the editorial letter does not give you something you can act on, tell us within 14 days and before Stage 2 begins, and we refund you in full. The details are on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
Start with an honest read of your whole book
Every edit begins at Stage 1, the Editorial Review: Edith reads the whole manuscript and writes you an editorial letter. You decide what happens next.
On a phone? Edith works on your computer. We’ll email you a link.
Email me the link to start
Edith reads your first 10,000 words and writes you an editorial letter, no credit card needed. The whole book, with every point open to discuss, is $15. Never used to train anything, and yours to delete.