Beta Readers

Seven readers.
Seven perspectives.

Seven distinct reader personas — each with their own tastes, priorities, and reading lens — give chapter-by-chapter feedback and a full narrative assessment of your manuscript.

Start a beta read $1 per 5,000 words · 7 readers
Beta Readers preview
What a beta reader costs — vs. Kellen
Professional beta reader · EFA 2023 median
~$300
80,000 words · 6.7 hours at 200 wpm · $45/hr narrative reading rate
Kellen Beta Readers
$16
16 credits · $1 per 5,000 words · chapter-by-chapter notes + full narrative assessment
The readers

Consistent, specific, opinionated.

Each reader has a defined reading personality, established tastes, and a weighted set of priorities. You get the same reader every time — not a random draw.

Margot
Reads for character depth and emotional truth. Cares about interiority, voice, and whether she'd recommend the book to a friend.
Desmond
Reads for plot mechanics and structural integrity. Notices pacing, payoffs, and whether the story earns its ending.
Bea
A close, careful reader who notices language at the sentence level. Flags overwriting, flat dialogue, and passages that lose momentum.
Priya
Genre-aware and commercially minded. Reads for reader expectation, market positioning, and whether the book delivers on its promise.
Theo
Reads for stakes and tension. Tracks investment in characters, escalation across the narrative, and whether the story holds attention chapter by chapter.
Sandra
A voracious genre reader with strong opinions. Reads fast and reacts honestly — the early reader who will or won't finish a book.
Marcus
Reads for thematic coherence and worldbuilding. Notices when a book's internal logic breaks, and when its themes fail to cohere.
More coming
Additional reader personas are in development.
What you get

Chapter notes and a full narrative read.

Each reader produces two kinds of output — specific chapter-level reactions and a closing narrative assessment of the whole manuscript.

01
Chapter-by-chapter notes
As the reader moves through your manuscript, they leave notes at the chapter level: what's working, what's confusing, where engagement rises or falls, which characters they're following closely and which they've lost track of. Notes are specific to your text, not generic feedback.
02
Investment tracking
Each reader tracks character investment and stakes across the narrative. You see where they leaned in, where they started to disengage, and what caused each shift. This is what tells you whether a slow chapter is actually a pacing problem.
03
Closing narrative assessment
After finishing the manuscript, each reader delivers a full closing assessment: a one-sentence headline reaction, then two or three paragraphs of considered prose — what the book is doing well, where it's falling short, and what they'd want the author to reconsider. This is the note that takes an hour to get from a real reader.
Pricing

$1 per 5,000 words.

Each reader is a separate session. The cost is the same regardless of which reader you choose. Run one reader or all seven — you pay per read.

5,000 words Short story or novella chapter
1 credit · $1 ~$19 pro value
25,000 words Novella
5 credits · $5 ~$94 pro value
80,000 words Standard novel
16 credits · $16 ~$300 pro value
120,000 words Epic or literary fiction
24 credits · $24 ~$450 pro value

Word count rounded up to nearest 5,000, minimum 1 credit. Each reader is an independent session — running two readers on the same manuscript charges twice. Maximum manuscript size: 160,000 words. Credits refunded automatically if a run fails.

Find out what a reader actually thinks of your manuscript.

Upload your manuscript, choose a reader, and get back the notes that take weeks to collect.

Start a beta read