Questions, answered.

No. Your editor is AI. No one at RedPencil reads your book to write your reports or notes. People here read the messages you send us, which is a different thing, and our policy on support access will be on the Transparency page before launch.

Yes. At launch, deleting a book will remove it and everything made from it from your account at once. Encrypted backups clear within 30 days. The AI provider keeps its own short-lived copies on a separate schedule, which the Transparency page sets out. Deleting your account removes every book in it.

Only the AI provider that reads it for us. We name the providers, and we’ll publish how long each one keeps short-lived copies before launch. We won’t tell you your book never leaves our servers, because to be read by an AI it has to.

At launch, you’ll get four reports and notes pinned to your pages. The Editorial Letter gives the big-picture read. The Cold Reader Report is a simulated first read. The Continuity Report flags timeline slips, name changes and physical details. The Story Bible records every character, place and thread. Every note cites a chapter and page.

The Cold Reader is an AI simulating one first-time reader of your genre. It reads straight through and reacts chapter by chapter, and the report maps where its attention rose and dropped. It is one simulated reading: useful before beta readers, never a substitute for them, and it can’t predict how real readers will respond.

No. The editor points to the page, asks questions and suggests directions, such as cutting a scene or moving a reveal. It never writes prose for your book. The one change it can prepare is a continuity fix, like a name spelled two ways, and you review and apply that yourself.

No. We won’t invent comp titles for your book. We’ll describe the shelf it belongs on, and you choose the names.

No. It’s a pass before you hire a developmental editor, so the edit you pay for starts from a map of the whole book, or alongside one, between rounds. A person’s judgment over weeks is worth having, and RedPencil doesn’t replace it.

Novels. At launch the editor will read through a persona for your shelf: Fantasy & Sci-Fi, Romance, Mystery & Thriller, Horror, Historical Fiction or General Fiction, which also covers literary and women’s fiction. Young adult is an overlay on any of them. Conventions are lenses, not laws.

At launch: Word documents (.docx), PDFs (.pdf), EPUBs (.epub), Markdown (.md) or plain text (.txt). A .docx gives the cleanest read. PDFs convert on a best-effort basis, and a scanned PDF will need an extra text-recognition step, with a warning about how reliable it is.

Compile your project to a Word document (.docx) and upload that. A Scrivener project file can’t be uploaded as it is. Keep a heading at the start of each chapter when you compile, so the editor can tell where chapters begin.

Up to 350,000 words, read as one manuscript. Most novels fit the standard read. Very long books add a length surcharge: $15 up to 200,000 words, or $30 up to 350,000. The pricing page has the full table.

Not for the full read: it is built for the complete draft, because continuity and structure only make sense across all of it. At launch there will also be a free First Chapter read: one chapter, up to 6,000 words, with notes on that chapter alone.TBC(to be confirmed)

The planned launch price is $49 for a Manuscript Package: the whole read, all four reports and 150 credits. Credit packs start at $9.99 for 100 credits. There’s no subscription, and nothing is for sale yet.

Credits pay for what you ask after the read: 1 credit for a chat message, 5 credits to re-read a revised chapter, 40 credits for a fresh simulated Cold Reader run. They never expire.

We’ll publish the refund policy before launch, before anyone can pay. Until it’s settled we won’t promise terms here.

It can be wrong, so every note is built to be checked: it cites a chapter and page and says whether it is a fact on the page, an inference, or an editorial judgment. When the editor can’t determine something confidently, it says so rather than guessing. You can check each claim against your own page. see Sample reports, Editorial Letter, Ch. 11, p. 162

It won’t write or rewrite your prose, and it won’t name published books yours resembles. It isn’t a proofread, and it doesn’t stand in for human beta readers or a human editor. The decisions stay yours.

We send one email to check the address is yours. Nobody is added until they click the link in their own inbox. After that we write only when there’s news about the launch, and waitlist members hear first.

Write to hello@redpencil.ai and we’ll take your address off the list. If you never clicked the confirmation link, there’s nothing to do: you won’t hear from us again.

It can’t. It never writes a sentence. The editor points to the page and asks questions, and every word in your manuscript is still one you wrote. If the book sounds like you before the read, it sounds like you after it.

Not from the page. The editor never changes your text, so there’s nothing of ours in the manuscript to find. Whether you mention it is up to you. If an agent asks, the plain answer is true: an AI read the draft and made notes, and you did the revising.

Then you check the note against your page and set it aside. Sometimes it will be wrong. The editor is AI, and a careful reader can still misread a scene. That’s why every note cites a chapter and page and says whether it’s a fact, an inference or an editorial judgment. When it can’t tell, it says so. The decisions stay yours. see Sample reports, Editorial Letter, Ch. 14, p. 212

You shouldn’t take it on trust, so we write the rules down. Your book is never used to train AI. We name the provider that reads it, and if we switch, the Transparency page will say so. Deleting a book removes it from your account at once, and encrypted backups clear within 30 days; the Transparency page sets out the provider’s own short-lived copies. And the editor never writes your prose, so a human editor can still come after it.