#04 · Market fit · Read by Fred
Will it sell, where, and what would help it sell.
Fred places your book on its market: the shelf it belongs on, the books beside it and the readers who buy there. Then he reads the market for it, scores the fit, and writes the Amazon listing and the query letter you will need.
A plain book titled Your book title here opens to its first chapter as a draft. Fred, the editor, first gives his read of the whole book and the one thing to fix first, then suggests a light line edit with his reasoning, and once accepted the page updates. Three typeset styles are tried on the same pages: Romantic with a drop cap, Thriller with a large chapter number, and Editorial with left-aligned headings. The book closes, cover designs are dragged onto it, and it ends ready to publish as a print PDF and an ebook.
01
Your market, agreed with Fred
Fred reads your opening and says where a bookseller would put your book, which books it sits beside and who reads them. You agree it or change it, and your cover, your pages and the read all start from it.
02
A read of what sells there now
Fred searches what is selling on your shelf today, what its readers ask for, and weighs your book against it: a score out of a hundred, with the reasons, the stores and formats that suit it, and the steps that would move the score.
03
Your listing and your letter, ready to paste
The Amazon description, categories and keywords, and a query letter for agents, written from the read. Update them whenever the book changes.
04
Launch images
3D mockups, A+ panels for your Amazon page and the sizes ads and social posts need, made from your own cover files, never redrawn.
One part of the house
It all works from the same manuscript, so nothing gets redone.
Common questions
For now, yes, and on purpose. Editing is the first and hardest part of getting a book out and the part nothing else does well, so it's where we started. But the longer plan is the whole journey from finished draft to published book: editing first, then typesetting, then cover, then getting it onto the shelf and devices. We're building the publishing house as software, one piece at a time, and the edit is the piece that's live today.