Decide with confidence.
We read. We don't rewrite.
Send us a finished manuscript, Word or PDF, either is fine. In days, you get back a page-cited report of what holds, what contradicts the record, and how much work stands between the book and your standard. It reads. It reports. The author and the editor decide.
One manuscript, up to 90,000 words. Longer books quoted first. Word or PDF, either is fine.
- Continuity report, every finding page-cited
- Accuracy ledger, every claim sorted and sourced
- Endnote and fix worklist
- Score against the house standard you name
- Reviewed by Grant Overstake before delivery
- Your manuscript returned unchanged
Your file is converted to PDF on arrival and the PDF is what gets read. Your original goes back to you and is deleted from my system. Your Word document is never opened for editing.
Author's written permission required for any manuscript you did not write. NDA on request.
"Saved me a ton of time, money, and potentially embarrassing mistakes."
"I sent Grant Overstake my final edited manuscript of a novel by a new author for us and asked for a SecondRead. What came back in one day was a granular, page-cited report: where the manuscript contradicted itself, which claims held up against the public record, which ones needed a source or an author's note, and a plain summary of how much work stood between the book and where we wanted it. Nothing in the manuscript was changed.
"I forwarded the report to the author, who addressed almost every item himself without a call from me. What remained was the timeline question, and the report had mapped the problems clearly enough that we settled them in one conversation. For a small house with no fact-checking department, that is a valuable second set of eyes I could not have afforded any other way. It read, it reported, and it left the decisions to us."
Gregory F. A. Pierce, President and Publisher, ACTA Publications
Quoted with permission of the publisher.
Both critical reports, charted and referenced by page.
A continuity report and an accuracy ledger, with a worklist and a score. Every finding is cited to its page and traced to a named source, so you never take the read on faith.
A number, and the evidence behind every point of it.
Historical fiction · 94,000 words
Close to standard. A short endnote worklist and two continuity fixes before submission. The score measures distance to one named house's own documented standard, and every point traces back to the findings behind it.
Every claim, cited to the page, sorted against the record.
In the full report each line also names the source it was checked against. A few lines from a sample ledger:
| Claim | Page | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Tomatoes served at the royal feast | p. 12 | Contradicts |
| Bronze coins with the ruler's profile | p. 41 | Supported |
| The general's speech before the battle | p. 88 | From the chronicle |
| The hanging gardens beside the palace | p. 103 | Supported (tradition) |
| A thunderstorm on the wedding night | p. 156 | Liberty |
Where the book disagrees with itself.
Ages, names, dates
A character who is forty on page 12 and thirty-eight on page 200. A surname spelled two ways. A season that changes mid-chapter.
Timelines
Events that cannot both be true in the order given. The report lays the dates side by side so the fix is obvious.
Deliberate motifs
What the author repeats on purpose is certified as held steady, so a pattern is not mistaken for a slip.
A detective novel whose murderer fires a gun that had not yet been manufactured draws the one-star review, however good the rest is. That is the detail a read exists to catch.
Same method. Different bar.
Every read runs both passes, whatever the genre. What changes is the standard the manuscript is measured against, named at the top of the report, and which verdicts do the most work.
Historical fiction
The work is the line between fact and liberty. The ledger separates what the record supports from what the author changed on purpose, and names each. A deliberate reframing is marked Liberty, not error, so the author can own it in a note instead of being caught by a reviewer. Anachronisms are the classic catch: a tomato at a medieval feast, a firearm before its patent, a train before the line was built. Timelines are checked two ways, against the book itself and against the dated events it leans on.
Measures: continuity, distance from the documented record, whether the liberties are disclosed.
Does not measure: plot, prose, character, or whether the book will sell.
Religious and historical nonfiction
The work is whether the citation says what the manuscript says it says. Scripture references are checked chapter and verse. Quotations are traced to their attributed source. Dates of councils, saints, pontificates, and events are checked against the record. A claim that rests on tradition rather than independent record is marked Supported (tradition), so the reader is told which kind of support stands behind it. Names and terms are held consistent across chapters.
Measures: continuity, accuracy of citation and date, sufficiency of sourcing.
Does not measure: doctrine, orthodoxy, theology, or the strength of the argument. Faith claims are not ruled on; their citations are.
A contemporary manuscript gets the same treatment. The ACTA read anchored a book's internal timeline to the real-world events it sits on, and that check is part of every read, not an upgrade.
What SecondRead does not do.
It never touches the manuscript.
Nothing is edited, rewritten, or generated. The manuscript comes back exactly as it went in. The report is a separate document.
It does not replace the author or the editor.
They decide what to act on. The report does not grade the writing or say whether a book belongs on your list.
It does not catch everything.
No read does. We catch most, and we show our work, so every line invites you to check it.
It is AI-assisted, and says so.
Every finding is reviewed by Grant Overstake before delivery. Nothing reaches you on machine confidence alone. It is the check that comes after the writing is done, not part of the writing.
One wrong detail lands on your list, not the author's.
A submission you believe in, but you can't fully vouch for the history without weeks you don't have.
A manuscript in your queue that deserves a close read against the record before you commit budget to it.
Your own book, and you want to know what a careful reviewer will find before you send it out.
Your manuscript stays yours.
We read it, report on it, and return it. We don't circulate it, and we don't retain it after the read. Every read is conditioned on the author's written permission.
NDA on request. Send one with the manuscript, or use ours. Either way, the read and its findings never leave the two of us.
Same read, member price.
One manuscript, up to 90,000 words. Longer books quoted first. Word or PDF, either is fine.
- Continuity report, every finding page-cited
- Accuracy ledger, every claim sorted and sourced
- Endnote and fix worklist
- Score against the house standard you name
- Reviewed by Grant Overstake before delivery
- Your manuscript returned unchanged
Your file is converted to PDF on arrival and the PDF is what gets read. Your original goes back to you and is deleted from my system. Your Word document is never opened for editing.
Author's written permission required for any manuscript you did not write. NDA on request.
Send the finished manuscript.
Send it as you would hand it to your own in-house editor and fact-checker: complete and ready for that pass, not a draft. Word or PDF, with the title, the word count, and the standard it should be measured against. You'll have a delivery date within two business days.
Send Your ManuscriptDecided, and ready to build the book? Meet BookLab.