For publishers · Publisher Panel

Your first read of a manuscript.
It tells you plainly what isn't working.

The Publisher Panel reviews a submitted manuscript the way an acquiring editor working the slush pile would. In minutes the publisher gets an editorial review: a craft assessment across eleven dimensions, a sales profile with comparable titles, a revision plan and a publishing recommendation. This is not another praise machine.

Book a demo → How it works

VAT invoice · One-day onboarding · NDA on request

Editorial report · Manuscript #14
Publishing recommendation Consider
strongly reject
Language and style 78
Structure and plot 64
Characters 71
Author's own text 96% 4% looks machine-generated
Language and style 78
Structure and plot 64
Pacing and scene construction 70
Characters 71
Dialogue 66
World and setting 82
Tension curve · 24 chapters
Ch. 8–9: a clear drop in tension
Critical The investigation thread breaks off in ch. 9 and never returns.
High The antagonist only enters the action halfway through the novel.
Medium Repetitive verbs in the dialogue tags.
Shelf domestic crime
Reader adults, 30–50
Category demand stable
Foreign markets Scandinavian crime rising
Comparable titles
Cold Shore, 2023 The Second Shift, 2024
Analysis time: 3 min 48 s 82,400 words
Email inbox
  • ✕
    Manuscripts in assorted formats, scattered across the inbox, easy to miss
  • ✕
    2–4 weeks of reading before you know whether a title fits your list
  • ✕
    An editor commits fully before learning the text's structure and potential
  • ✕
    Canon inconsistencies surface at copy-editing, after the contract is signed
  • ✕
    The best novel in the pile waits because there was no time to reach the end
Publisher Panel
  • ✓
    Your own submissions page under a single link instead of an overflowing inbox
  • ✓
    Minutes. A full editorial review before an editor opens the file
  • ✓
    A craft assessment across 11 dimensions and a clear publishing recommendation
  • ✓
    A list of inconsistencies with their location (chapter, quote) ready before the contract
  • ✓
    The whole pile reviewed. No good manuscript lost for lack of time

How it works

The publisher clicks once.
The rest takes care of itself.

No settings, no configuration. The analysis runs in the background for two to five minutes, with progress shown live. The finished report opens in a tabbed view: Overview, Dimensions, Chapters, Revision plan, Sales potential.

  1. 1 Reading and splitting into chapters
  2. 2 Craft and style assessment
  3. 3 Characters, plot threads and locations
  4. 4 Sales profile and comparable titles
  5. 5 Consistency of the story world
  6. 6 Publishing recommendation

Craft assessment

Eleven dimensions of craft assessment

Vellam scores each dimension from 0 to 100, against fixed bands. This is not one overall “quality”. It is that quality broken into specific, named dimensions of craft. The assessment is tuned to the text's intent: it does not measure slow literary prose by a thriller's yardstick.

85–100
Ready to publish The craft is invisible, entirely in service of the text.
70–84
Strong and controlled Problems are local and can be named.
50–69
Uneven Good passages sit next to amateurish ones; inconsistency prevails.
30–49
Amateur Craft errors are the rule, not the exception.
0–29
The dimension fails On its own it sinks the text.
01 Language and style Sentence rhythm, word precision, strong verbs over weak ones, filter words, showing instead of telling, a recognizable voice.
02 Structure and plot Scene turning points, the cause-and-effect chain, act architecture with escalation, a real midpoint, tension resolved at the climax.
03 Pacing and scene construction The rhythm of scenes and sequences, micro-tension, economy of entering and leaving a scene, variety of pace.
04 Characters Character agency, the tension between want and need, an arc earned through scenes, a credible antagonist.
05 Dialogue Subtext, distinct voices, dialogue working on several levels at once, sparing narrative interjections.
06 Point of view and narrative distance A consistent point of view, controlled distance, clean transitions between narrators, deep personal narration.
07 World and setting A world fused with the action and the senses, no information overload, the concrete over the generic, consistent logic.
08 Theme and meaning A coherent idea growing out of the climax, theme shown through choices and consequences, an idea in real conflict with its counter-idea.
09 Premise and originality A fresh, legible idea, originality in execution and in the combination of motifs, a promise kept.
10 Opening and hook A first page with tension and a dramatic question, a vivid voice from the start, orientation in the world without overload.
11 Ending and emotional payoff A climax that answers the dramatic question. Surprising, yet inevitable. No solutions falling from the sky.

Decision

The publishing
recommendation.

At the end of the report, one clear judgment. Not a star rating, not a generality. Four options, each grounded in the novel's craft and market potential. A signal before an editor invites the author to talk.

  1. Strongly consider Craft and market potential justify a quick conversation with the author.
  2. Consider The text has strengths; the decision needs an editor's read.
  3. Lean reject Readiness signals are weak; the risk outweighs the potential.
  4. Reject The manuscript does not meet the editorial threshold.

The full report

What else the report gives you

Sales potential

A separate commercial assessment, not a craft one: shelf positioning, the target reader, category demand, two to four comparable titles from recent years, a realistic sales range, strengths and risks, subsidiary-rights potential. Every judgment comes with its basis and a confidence level.

Revision plan

Five to nine ordered recommendations, most important first. Structure and characters before sentence-level fixes. Each recommendation comes with a rationale, a concrete fix and a weight: critical, high, medium.

Themes

Recognized genre tropes and themes drawn directly from the text, not from the metadata or the back-cover copy.

Style profile

Register, narrative mode, the character of the prose and the intended pace, that is, how the text wants to be read. On that basis Vellam chooses the lens for assessing the other dimensions.

Foreign market bestsellers

A decision to acquire rights or commission a translation should not rest on a hunch. The Panel shows what is actually selling in foreign markets, the US, German and Asian markets among them, and sets the novel's profile against current bestseller lists. You see whether comparable titles are doing well abroad before you sit down to talk contract.

Warning signal

AI content detector

Vellam estimates how much of a manuscript looks machine-written. In the readiness summary it shows a single clear percentage: from fully the author's own text to fully generated. It recognizes content from popular generators, including text run through humanizing tools.

The assessment does not stop at a number. Vellam highlights in the text the specific sentences that look machine-made. It collects them into a map of suspect passages. The publisher sees not just the scale but the exact places, before inviting the author to talk.

Vellam was built to replace the thoughtless praise of text generators. Now it also tells an author's manuscript from generated text.

96% author's own text
Map of suspect passages

Technical layer

Static text analysis

Beneath the editorial review runs a layer of technical text analysis, sentence by sentence. Run on demand, in three languages: Polish, English and German. Nine layers, each highlighting problem passages right in the text, just as in the editor.

Chapter 3 · excerpt EN

It was a dark and stormy night, and the wind howled past the windows of the old house where no one had lived for years, though the neighbours swore that at night a faint, flickering light could be seen inside. The door was opened by the draught. Anna was terrified. “We have to get out of here,” she said quietly. Her heart pounded, pounded faster and faster. Truth be told, she had no idea where to run.

  • of course Clichés, fillers, redundancies
  • long sentence Long sentences
  • was done Passive narration
  • was Weak verbs
  • noun Parts-of-speech map
  • quietly Adverbs
  • echo, echo Repetitions
  • 58 / 42 Dialogue vs narration
  • foggy sentence Fogginess

Submissions

Submissions without email

The Publisher Panel gives your house its own submissions page under a single link, with your logo and a welcome message. Authors send their novel through the form, and it lands straight in the panel, ready to assess.

  • ✓ An ordered list instead of an overflowing inbox
  • ✓ Every submission goes straight to a full read
  • ✓ Submissions closed with a single switch when you are not taking new texts
Submissions open

We're looking for debuts and genre fiction. Send your manuscript and we'll get back to you.

Novel title
Author
Manuscript (.docx, .pdf, .txt)
Send submission

ROI calculation

What does
inefficient pre-screening cost?

We don't come with a price list. We come with a calculation on your own numbers, and a demo on your own manuscript.

Book a demo →
Estimated annual cost of manuscript pre-screening
Editor hours per manuscript 15–30 hrs
Fully loaded cost of an editor-hour £40–60 / hr
Cost of a full assessment per manuscript £600–1,800
Manuscripts given a full assessment per year 15–50
Total annual cost £9,000–90,000
The Publisher Panel removes the mechanical phase of every assessment from title #1

The rate includes the full cost of employment (salary + payroll taxes + overhead). A demo on your manuscript will show concrete results.

Questions

Before you
write to us.

Does Vellam replace the editor?
No. The Publisher Panel removes the mechanical part of pre-screening: reading the text, breaking it into dimensions, checking consistency and structure. The literary judgment, the publishing decision and the relationship with the author stay with your editor. Vellam gives them organized data so they can focus on what truly needs human judgment.
What exactly do the eleven dimensions assess?
Language and style, structure and plot, pacing and scene construction, characters, dialogue, point of view, world and setting, theme and meaning, premise and originality, opening and hook, and ending and emotional payoff. Each dimension gets a score from 0 to 100 against fixed bands, and the assessment is tuned to the register and intent of the text.
How quickly do we see results on our manuscript?
The analysis runs in the background and usually takes two to five minutes for a novel of up to 100,000 words. Progress is shown live. After that you have a complete report: an assessment across eleven dimensions, a sales profile, a revision plan, a map of characters and plot threads, a list of inconsistencies with their location, and a publishing recommendation.
How does the AI content detector work?
Vellam shows a single percentage: how much of the manuscript looks machine-written. It recognizes content from popular generators, including text run through humanizing tools. It also highlights specific suspect sentences in the text. You get a clear signal before you invite the author to talk.
What is the submissions page under your own link?
It is your own submissions page under a single link, with your logo and a welcome message. Authors send manuscripts through the form, and they land straight in the panel as an ordered list, ready to assess. You close submissions with a single switch when you are not taking new texts.
Does Vellam train models on our manuscripts?
No. Your manuscripts are treated as private data and are not used to train any models. They are stored only for the duration of the active project. We sign an NDA where the contract with the author requires it.
What formats does Vellam accept for manuscripts?
.docx (Word), .pdf and .txt. The maximum file size is 5 MB. The file should contain chapter headings in the form “Chapter 1”, because Vellam analyses the text chapter by chapter.
How long is onboarding and how do we pay?
Onboarding is one working day. Vellam runs in the browser: no installation, no integration, no IT training. We bill by VAT invoice, and we set the B2B pricing individually, depending on the number of manuscripts per month and the scope of your needs.

Demo

See the Publisher Panel
on your own manuscript.

20 minutes. Your text. No commitment. You leave with a finished editorial review: an assessment across eleven dimensions, a sales profile, a revision plan and a publishing recommendation.

Write to us Try it yourself →

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