A manuscript report — also called an editorial report, reader's report or editorial letter — is a written document in which an editor tells you what is and is not working in your whole book, and what to do about it. It contains no edits to the text itself. For most authors it is the single most useful document in the editing process, because it answers the question that decides everything else: is this book ready, and if not, what kind of work does it need? Here is what a good one contains, how to read it without flinching, and the cheaper ways to get one.
Formats vary by editor, but a thorough report on a novel commonly runs 8–25 pages and covers these sections in roughly this order:
| Section | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Overall verdict | One or two paragraphs: where the book stands, its biggest strength, its biggest risk, and what kind of revision it needs (light polish, targeted rework, structural rewrite). |
| Premise and market | Whether the concept delivers the genre promise — in romance, whether the central relationship drives the book and the ending satisfies. |
| Structure and pacing | Where the hook actually lands, whether the inciting incident arrives in time, where the middle sags, whether the climax pays off what the opening set up. |
| Character and arcs | Whether the protagonists want something concrete, whether they change, whether the change is earned on the page. See what an editor checks in a character arc. |
| Point of view and voice | Head-hopping, inconsistent distance, a voice that flattens in the middle chapters. |
| Dialogue, prose and style | Patterns rather than line fixes: filter words, repetition, telling where showing is needed, over-explained emotion. |
| Chapter-by-chapter notes | The most actionable part: specific observations pinned to specific scenes. |
| Prioritised revision plan | What to fix first, second and third — because you cannot fix everything at once, and fixing structure first often dissolves the smaller notes. |
The terms get used loosely, so here is the practical distinction:
A real-shaped chapter note: "Ch. 9 — Mara's decision to go back to the ranch is the turn the whole second act rests on, but it happens in a two-line summary at the end of a scene about the fence. Give it a scene of its own: she needs to choose it on the page, against a cost we can see."
The weakness of the human report is timing: it arrives weeks after you send the book and costs enough that you only buy it once. By then you have often rewritten past the draft it describes. An automated whole-manuscript read closes that gap, and it is what Authors Starport is built to produce. The Developmental Critique returns exactly the document above — a clear verdict, strengths and problem areas ranked by priority, chapter-by-chapter notes tied to your actual scenes, and concrete fixes — written for romance structure and reader expectations, in minutes rather than weeks, so you can run it on every draft. Instant Score adds the numbers no human report includes: nine deterministic craft metrics that let you prove draft four is better than draft three. The free Reader-Ready Scorecard is the place to start; when the book is close, buy the human report once, on the draft that deserves it.
The Reader-Ready Scorecard grades your full manuscript on nine craft metrics, benchmarks it against professionally-edited books, and tells you exactly what to fix first. Free, in minutes.
Get your free Reader-Ready Scorecard →A manuscript report, also called an editorial report, reader's report or editorial letter, is a written document in which an editor assesses a whole manuscript — verdict, structure and pacing, character arcs, point of view, prose patterns, chapter-by-chapter notes and a prioritised revision plan — without editing the text itself. It is the document a manuscript evaluation produces and the core of a developmental edit.
A thorough report on a full-length novel commonly runs 8–25 pages. Shorter reports of 3–5 pages exist for partial manuscripts or lighter assessments; reports that come with a developmental edit are usually at the longer end and accompanied by margin comments in the manuscript itself.
The report is a standalone document about the book. A developmental edit includes that report plus detailed comments throughout the manuscript and usually a follow-up discussion with the editor. A report alone commonly costs $600–$1,500 for a novel; a full developmental edit commonly costs $1,500–$6,000+.
A human editorial report on an 80,000-word novel commonly runs $600–$1,500, depending on the editor's experience and depth. AI whole-manuscript reports such as Authors Starport's Developmental Critique cost a small fraction of that and return in minutes; the free Reader-Ready Scorecard gives the diagnostic read at no cost.
Read it twice, a day apart. Separate the diagnosis (usually right) from the prescribed fix (one option among several). Tackle the largest structural note first, then re-read the report, because many smaller notes disappear once structure is fixed. Look for repeated observations across chapter notes — they usually point to one underlying problem — and draft a revision plan before you touch the manuscript.