You know what you meant. Do your readers?
Before you commit to publication, put your manuscript in front of 20 - 25 readers in your target audience. Get a detailed report showing what connects, where attention drops, and which issues recur across their responses.
20 - 25 real target readers
Your entire manuscript is read
Receive a 24+ page report
All in approximately three weeks
Find the disconnect before they do.
Three diagnostic questions:
Does the opening make readers want to keep reading?
Where do readers become confused or lose interest?
Does the ending deliver what the book promises?
You’ve invested time, thought, and care in your manuscript. Before publication, discover where readers become confused, lose interest, or want more, while you still have time to revise.
You’ve read your book too many times to see it like a reader. Get candid feedback from 20 - 25 real people in your target audience before you publish.
“Getting a BookFeedback report is like reading your Amazon reviews before you even turn in your book. It allowed me to fix everything and turn in a much better manuscript. I will get a BookFeedback report on everything I write from here on out.”
~ Donald Miller
New York Times Bestselling Author
Getting Feedback Is Easy!
Three Steps to Understanding your Readers’ Response.
Submit your manuscript.
Tell us about your book and the readers you want to reach.
Hear from your target audience.
20 - 25 readers read your full manuscript and share their responses.
Receive your report.
See recurring strengths and concerns, then decide where to focus your revision.
Know what to strengthen. Know what to keep.
What Connects: See which passages, ideas and moments resonate most strongly.
Where Readers Struggle: Find where attention drops, meaning becomes unclear, or readers want more.
Which concerns recur: See which issues surface across multiple responses and which are simply individual preferences.
Report Excerpt
Following is an actual excerpt from a BookFeedback report . . .
Balance of Action, Dialogue, and Explanation
64% of readers, including some of those who previously reported that the book was well balanced as a whole, noted that the narrative slowed down most significantly during the Dungeons and Dragons scene. The most common criticisms were that this was “overdone” with excessive detail or that they lost interest because they couldn’t relate.
“The plot dragged at certain points of the story . . . it was too slow during the Dungeons and Dragons scene and mid-story there are multiple pages detailing the wrapping of a gift. These parts could have been shortened.”
“There was only one part of the book that didn't capture my attention as much as the rest. It was in Chapter 22 where they are playing Dungeons and Dragons and going through the details of their game moves. I've never played before so I couldn't relate to the chapter as easily as the rest. Other than that one part, the entire book was very well written, and I didn't find it repetitive or overdone.”
“While the balance was sound overall, there are a few instances where I thought things were maybe overexplained. The action in this book isn't action movie action, its relationship development, but it is constant and varied. And because it's relational, a large amount of dialogue is necessary and fits well into the story. There isn't a lot that needs to be explained, and for the most part the explanations are sound. There are a few points while playing D&D that I thought this balance broke a bit when the author tried to define things or explain what Dungeon’s & Dragons was instead of simply trusting the reader to know or to figure it out.”
While the level and quality of the author’s detailed descriptions were largely an audience favorite, its current state, the Dungeons and Dragons scene appears to be too detailed for many readers—particularly those with little to no experience playing D&D. We recommend the author work with her editor to either trim or hone this scene, more seamlessly integrating it into the overall story and avoiding a slow-down in the narrative flow that could lose reader interest.
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Fiction
Non-Fiction
The feedback you can trust starts with the right readers.
A thriller reader and a business-book reader bring different expectations. We match your manuscript with readers in your target audience, so their feedback speaks to the people you want to reach.
Our Methodology
Recruitment and screening
Our First Look Readers™ panel is built through an enrollment and screening process designed to identify each reader’s demographic profile, reading interests, personal characteristics, and familiarity with different types of books. Prospective readers provide information ranging from age, education, geographic location, and family status to religious or spiritual affiliation and interest in general-market or Christian fiction and nonfiction.
For each project, readers can then be selected based on the characteristics most relevant to the book’s intended audience. A pre-project survey provides an additional layer of screening to help ensure that participants have a genuine interest in the type of book they are being asked to evaluate.
Selected First Look Readers™ are compensated for the substantial time required to read the manuscript and complete the research questions. Compensation is for participation—not for positive feedback. Readers are asked to respond candidly based on their own reading experience.
This process enables us to assemble a reader group that more closely reflects the people an author or publisher is actually trying to reach—and to provide feedback that is both relevant and actionable.
How We Establish That Readers Completed the Manuscript
Because readers complete the manuscript independently, we do not use a technical verification system to confirm that every page was read. Instead, completion is assessed through the depth, specificity, and consistency of each reader’s responses. The survey asks detailed questions about the manuscript’s characters, structure, pacing, themes, dialogue, strengths, weaknesses, and overall reading experience. Responses that reference specific elements of the book and remain consistent across multiple questions provide a strong indication that the reader engaged meaningfully with the manuscript. Answers that are overly vague, contradictory, or unsupported by details can be identified during review and treated accordingly.
How Responses Are Organized and Recurring Themes Identified
Once the surveys are complete, responses are reviewed question by question and grouped according to recurring themes, patterns, and points of agreement or disagreement. Similar observations are classified together, allowing us to determine how frequently a particular strength, concern, or recommendation appears across the reader group. Percentages are calculated from the full set of responses—not just from the comments selected for the report—and minority or opposing viewpoints are preserved when they provide important context.
The final report then synthesizes those patterns into focused sections, supported by representative reader quotes. Recurring observations are translated into clear takeaways about what is working, what may need attention, and where readers are having similar experiences with the manuscript. The For Your Consideration commentary goes a step further by bringing related feedback together and identifying the most meaningful opportunities for revision, rather than simply repeating what individual readers said.
Why 20 - 25 readers?
A group of 20–25 readers is large enough to reveal recurring reactions, shared strengths, and common points of confusion while still allowing each response to be reviewed in depth. The purpose is not to predict how the entire market will respond, but to identify meaningful patterns within a carefully selected group of target readers. When the same observation appears independently across multiple responses, it can provide a useful signal about how elements such as pacing, character development, clarity, structure, or emotional impact are being experienced. The result is qualitative insight that helps authors recognize patterns they may want to consider during revision.
Audience Groups
Fiction: Thriller, science fiction, literary fiction, and other supported genres
Nonfiction: Business, leadership, personal growth, self-development, history, and faith
Memoir: Readers drawn to personal stories and lived experience
. . . and many others . . .
Know how readers respond before you invest in editing, design and marketing.
Your BookFeedback Report: $3,950
Your investment includes full-manuscript feedback from 20-25 target readers and a 24+ page report bringing their responses together.
As you plan your publishing budget, include reader insight alongside editing, design, and launch.