For Publishers · Completed Fiction Manuscripts
See More Before You Acquire
Every manuscript is an opportunity. Every acquisition is a commitment.
Publishers make decisions before the market does.
Before sales numbers. Before reviews. Before returns. Before anyone knows whether a debut author will become a name readers remember.
KATXY evaluates completed fiction manuscripts across 150+ evaluation parameters to produce one KATXY Score and a comprehensive Manuscript Intelligence Report.
See the manuscript across craft, audience, market, commercial positioning, revision and publishing readiness — before deciding what to build around it.
Find a Manuscript's KATXY Score
KATXY / Manuscript IntelligenceReport overview
KATXY Score
823One reference point.A complete publishing perspective.
Report contents◦ ◦ ◦
Inside the
manuscript
Structural & Craft Analysis
Genre & Audience
Comparable Landscape
Commercial Positioning
Submission Readiness
150+ evaluation parameters → 50+ page report
- 150+Evaluation ParametersComprehensive Manuscript Analysis
- 450+Analytical ChecksPublishing Risk Profile
- OneKATXY ScoreA Standardized Decision Signal
- 50+Page Intelligence ReportInformed Publishing Decision
Acquisition Commitment
You Make the Bet Before the Market Gives You the Answer.
Acquisition is one decision. What follows can take more than a year.
12–18+ months
A book can spend 12–18+ months moving from acquisition toward publication.
- Acquire
- Editorial
- Design
- Production
- Positioning
- Sell-In
- Marketing & Publicity
- Publication
The acquisition decision sits at the beginning of all of it.
By the time the market gives you its answer, a substantial amount of editorial attention, production effort, marketing capacity and capital may already have been committed.
KATXY gives you another layer of manuscript intelligence while the book is still a manuscript. Before the downstream commitment begins.
Structural & Craft
Is the Manuscript Strong Enough to Build On?
Before investing around the book, examine what is inside it.
Does the story sustain itself?
Pacing · Momentum · Conflict · World-Building
Examine pacing, momentum, conflict and world-building.
Do the characters carry the narrative?
Character · Agency · Emotion
See character depth, protagonist agency and emotional resonance.
Does the execution support the ambition?
Voice · Craft · Theme
Examine voice, technical craft and thematic depth.
KATXY perspectiveSee the creative foundation you are considering building a publishing programme around.
Genre & Audience
Who Is the Reader You're Acquiring For?
The opportunity is not simply publishing a book. It is connecting that book with readers.
There is a substantial market on the other side of the acquisition decision.
More than $15 billion
Fiction publishing represents a market of more than $15 billion across traditional and independent publishing estimates.
The harder question is:
Where does this manuscript belong within that opportunity?The manuscript at the centerThe BookReader · Experience · Genre · Orientation
Who is the natural reader?
Audience Profile
See the audience profile emerging from the manuscript.
Where does the book belong?
Genre · Subgenres
Understand its primary genre and meaningful subgenres.
What does it ask from the reader?
Complexity · Accessibility
See reading complexity, accessibility and intellectual density.
How is it creatively oriented?
Literary ↔ Commercial
Understand its literary–commercial position.
KATXY perspectiveThe market is substantial. KATXY helps examine the readership opportunity inside an individual manuscript.
Comparable Landscape
What Market Are You Buying Into?
A manuscript does not enter an empty bookshelf.
800,000+
More than 800,000 fiction releases were recorded across the major fiction categories reported in the U.S. in 2025 — with more than 740,000 coming through self-publishing.
A book no longer competes only with the traditional publishing list. It competes for reader attention across the entire fiction market.
The question is not whether competition exists.
It is whether the manuscript has a compelling place within it.Crowded territory?
See the density of the surrounding market.
Distinct enough?
Understand where the manuscript differentiates itself.
Existing readership nearby?
See where audiences for comparable fiction overlap.
A credible point of entry?
Examine comparative advantages, pressures and market-entry risk.
KATXY perspectiveDo not evaluate the manuscript only in isolation. See the competitive landscape it may eventually have to enter.
Commercial Positioning
Can Editorial Promise Become Commercial Performance?
Acquiring a good manuscript does not guarantee a good publishing outcome.
Publishing has always involved uncertainty.
more than 85%
Even among books expected to become top sellers, more than 85% of author contracts in one major U.S. publishing dataset did not earn out their advances.
The point is not that publishers should avoid risk. Taking risks is publishing.
The question is whether you can understand more about the manuscript before taking one.- Editorial Promise
- Positioning
- Market Proposition
Can the proposition be communicated clearly?
See positioning and pitch clarity.
Can the market understand where it belongs?
Examine shelf legibility and commercial position.
What does it ask from readers?
See accessibility pressure and reader commitment.
How does the opportunity present commercially?
Examine readership elasticity, acquisition temperature and market competitiveness.
KATXY perspectiveCreative judgment finds books worth believing in. Commercial intelligence helps determine how that belief might travel into the market.
Revision Outlook
What Are You Really Acquiring?
Sometimes you are acquiring a manuscript. Sometimes you are acquiring the work still required to make it publishable.
The advance is visible.
The development commitment is harder to see.
A manuscript with a stable foundation and contained revision needs creates a very different publishing commitment from one requiring substantial interconnected work.
Visible at acquisitionAdvance / acquisition
Less visible at acquisitionDevelopment commitment
Editorial time
How much development may remain?
Revision scope
Are the issues contained or interconnected?
Commercial flexibility
How much can move without weakening the book?
Preservation
What should not be lost through development?
KATXY perspectiveKATXY does not edit the manuscript. It gives you another view of the development commitment that may come with it.
Submission Readiness
Is It Ready for Your List?
Acquisition decisions rarely depend on one signal.
A manuscript can be beautifully written but difficult to position.
Commercially legible but structurally exposed.
Distinctive but demanding substantial revision.
Or unusually aligned across several dimensions.
StructureCommercial readinessPositioningRevision exposure
Structurally ready?
See its structural position.
Commercially ready?
Examine commercial readiness.
Clearly positioned?
See whether its publishing proposition is sufficiently legible.
How much uncertainty remains?
Bring revision exposure, strengths and blockers into the same view.
KATXY perspectiveKATXY brings the manuscript's major acquisition-facing signals together before you decide what happens next.
Publishing Campaign
Publication Day Is Not the Finish Line.
After months of work, the market finally gets a vote.
Traditional trade publishing has historically operated with returns around 30% on average, and research on publishing distribution has described new books as having roughly six weeks to establish early sales momentum before returns become a serious concern.
- Acquired✓
- Edited✓
- Designed✓
- Produced✓
- Distributed✓
- Published✓
- Readers
Will readers choose it?
Who should the campaign prioritize?
Translate audience intelligence into reader priorities.
What should lead the message?
Identify the manuscript's strongest market-facing qualities.
How should the book enter the market?
Build market-entry direction from the intelligence already developed around the manuscript.
Where should effort concentrate?
Turn accumulated manuscript intelligence into campaign priorities.
KATXY perspectiveCarry what you have learned about the manuscript all the way from acquisition to the moment it has to compete for readers.
Score + Full Report
One KATXY Score. The Intelligence Behind the Decision.
You cannot remove uncertainty from publishing. You can make the decision with more information.
The KATXY Score gives the manuscript one standardized reference point.
The Manuscript Intelligence Report gives you the evidence behind it.
KATXY Score
823One manuscript. One KATXY Score. A complete publishing perspective.Manuscript Intelligence ReportReport contents
The evidence behind the Score:
Manuscript Snapshot
The manuscript's major publishing signals in one view.
Executive Summary
A compressed editorial orientation and view of its narrative foundations.
Structural & Craft Analysis
Execution across 11 fiction-craft dimensions.
Genre & Audience
The readership and reading experience surrounding the manuscript.
Comparable Landscape
Its competitive market context and differentiation.
Commercial Positioning
The manuscript as a publishing proposition.
Revision Outlook
The development commitment that may remain.
Submission Readiness
The manuscript's current publishing-readiness picture.
Publishing Campaign
How its intelligence can carry toward market entry and readers.
- 150+ Evaluation Parameters
- 450+ Analytical Checks
- One KATXY Score
- 50+ Page Intelligence Report