AI editorial workspace for novelists

Read your own book the way an editor would.

You're too close to your own manuscript to see it clearly. FirstRead reads it chapter by chapter, tells you what's working and what needs attention, and points you back to the passages behind each note — before a single sentence gets rewritten.

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Private to your account. Chapters are detected automatically from a .docx or .txt upload.

the paragraph is doing the reader's work for them ↘

Chapter Eleven · Low Water

The dock was still wet from the morning tide, and Maren stood at the end of it longer than she needed to.

She felt a deep and overwhelming grief wash over her, the kind that made it hard to breathe. Somewhere behind her, the screen door had stopped banging.

“You should come in,” her father said. He didn't move either.

Voice & Consistency

The grief is named before it's earned.

Cut the summary sentence and let the wet dock, the stopped door, and the line of dialogue carry it — the reader will feel it without being told to.

The FirstRead philosophy

The assessment comes first.

Most writing tools start by changing your words.
FirstRead starts by understanding them.

A developmental read of the chapter or the whole book — voice, pacing, structure, and character, split into what's working and what needs attention — drawing on the passages that led to each observation. Then you decide where to go deeper. Nothing is rewritten until you ask.

Inside FirstRead

From the big picture to the sentence.

One manuscript, different editorial lenses. Start with what the book is doing. Then move deeper wherever the work needs it.

Developmental Assessment

See the book before you touch the sentences.

FirstRead gives you a developmental read of a chapter or the whole manuscript: what's working, what needs attention, and the passages that prompted each observation.

Overview — a written editorial read of the chapter or manuscript.
Strengths and Needs Improvement, written with concrete examples from your text.
Findings across voice, pacing, structure, showing vs. telling, and more.
Click a finding and jump straight to the passage it points at.

Chapter Nine · Low Water

The kitchen smelled like burnt coffee before either of them had said a word. Maren felt a wave of sadness she couldn't name, heavy and formless, pressing down on her chest. Her mother set two mugs on the counter and didn't sit down.

He'd always been the one to leave the room first. This time he stayed, arms crossed, waiting for her to say the thing they'd both been avoiding since June.

Developmental Assessment

Strengths

Setting

The kitchen does real structural work without announcing itself.

The burnt coffee and the two untouched mugs are carrying the tension the dialogue hasn't earned yet. That's a strength worth protecting through revision.

Needs Improvement

Voice & Consistency

The narrator names the feeling before the scene has earned it.

Both flagged sentences summarize an emotion the physical details already show. Cut the summary and trust the coffee, the mugs, and the crossed arms to do the work.

Line Edit & Copyedit

Real suggestions, shown as a diff.

Line Edit works at the sentence level — clarity, pacing, word choice. Copyedit is deliberately narrower: grammar, spelling, and punctuation only. Every change arrives as a suggestion you accept or dismiss — nothing is rewritten silently.

Full sentences replaced, never patched piecemeal.
Each suggestion carries a short rationale, not just a correction.
Accept, dismiss, or keep the original — chapter by chapter.
Each mode stays in its lane: Copyedit is scoped to mechanics, Line Edit to prose.

Chapter Four · Low Water

Maren ~~walked very quickly and nervously~~hurried across the parking lot, ~~feeling extremely anxious about being late for the appointment~~already ten minutes late.

Suggested edit

Line Edit · Word Economy

Two padded phrases collapse into two words each without losing anything — “hurried” already carries the anxiety “walked very quickly and nervously” was spelling out.

Accept Dismiss

Ask Editor

Ask a question, get an answer grounded in your pages.

Ask Editor is scoped to a selection, a chapter, or the whole manuscript, so answers are drawn from what's actually on the page rather than generic writing advice.

Scope the conversation to a paragraph, a chapter, or the whole book.
Answers point back to the chapter and passage they draw on.
Ask about a character, a timeline, or a single line of dialogue.
The same conversation follows you as you keep revising.

Ask Editor · Whole book

You

Does Maren's reaction in chapter nine match how she acted in chapter two?

Editor

Mostly — in Chapter Two she goes quiet and busies her hands (the dish-towel scene); here in Chapter Nine she does the same thing with the coffee mugs. The pattern holds. The one shift: this is the first time she stays in the room instead of leaving it, which Chapter Nine's ending seems to want to earn. Worth flagging that turn explicitly if it's meant to land as a change.

Getting started

Start with a chapter. Keep working from there.

01 · Sign up

Create an account and drop in a chapter

.docx or .txt — FirstRead detects the chapter breaks for you.

02 · Context

Tell the editor about the book

Genre, tone, point of view, audience — anything that should shape the read.

03 · Assess

Read the developmental assessment

See what's working, what needs attention, and jump straight to the passage.

04 · Work

Go where the draft needs you

Line edit, copyedit, or ask a question — without leaving the page.

Privacy, plainly

Your unpublished book stays private.

FirstRead is built so your manuscript stays yours from upload to export.

Private to your account. Nothing you write is shared with other users.

Encrypted at rest, and not used to train third-party models.

Export any chapter — or the whole manuscript — as .docx or .txt, any time.

Delete a manuscript permanently, whenever you want.

The full policy lives at studio.firstread.app/privacy.

Pricing

Simple, honest pricing.

Start free. Upgrade when a book needs more than a first taste.

Free

A real taste

1 full-book assessment (one-time)
7 chapter reads / month
2 chapter edits / month
5 Ask Editor chat turns / month
1 manuscript, up to 25,000 words

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Recommended

Author

For a book in progress

$29.99 / month

3 full-book assessments / month
40 chapter reads, 80 edits / month
40 Ask Editor chat turns / month
5 manuscripts, up to 150,000 words each
Higher-quality model tier

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Author Pro

For serious output

$59.99 / month

4 full-book assessments / month
80 chapter reads, 150 edits / month
80 Ask Editor chat turns / month
20 manuscripts, up to 200,000 words each
Higher-quality model tier

Get started

Prices in USD, billed monthly, cancel any time. On every plan a single chapter can be up to 15,000 words. See the full plan comparison at studio.firstread.app/pricing.

Start with the manuscript you can't see clearly anymore

You've read your book a hundred times. Read it once like an editor.

Bring in a chapter or the whole book. Start with the developmental read, follow the findings into your prose, and ask questions as you revise.

Get started

Private to your account, from the very first chapter.