There is a long stretch in a book’s life where it isn’t published and isn’t private either. Beta readers have it. An editor has a copy. An agent asked for the first fifty pages. Every one of those handoffs is currently an email with a file attached, and a file has a property that makes writers uneasy: once it’s sent, it exists in other people’s folders indefinitely, in a version you can no longer correct, and there is no way to tell whether anyone opened it. Sending the manuscript as a page on an unguessable link changes the shape of that handoff — it reads properly on a phone, it stays off the public web, and you can close it when the read is done.
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Get the manuscript into a single self-contained HTML file — one page with the chapters running down it, styled the way you want it read — and upload it, or zip the folder if there’s cover art and illustrations alongside. You get a link in seconds. Send that instead of the attachment. Your reader taps it and starts reading, with no download, no app, and no argument between their reader software and your formatting.
The address is a 32-character unguessable string with a noindex tag on the page, so an unpublished draft doesn’t become a search result under its own title — which matters more for a manuscript than for most documents, since a book’s title is often the first thing an author is careful about. Add a viewer password when the draft is going to someone you’ve never worked with; that’s free on a registered account, though anonymous uploads have neither passwords nor expiry controls.
Then set an end to it. A beta read has a natural close, and an expiry set at the moment you send is the version of tidying up that actually happens — on a free account links run seven days plus one permanent slot, and on Solo or Studio you choose the date or turn expiry off entirely for a draft that stays open. You can also see how many times each link has been opened, which for a shortlist of readers is a more honest signal than asking. And when you cut chapter nine, you replace the file at the same address so everyone holding the link is reading the current draft rather than the one you’ve already fixed.
No, and it’s worth being blunt about that. Anything a person can read, a person can copy — that’s true of a web page, a PDF, a printout and a posted manuscript. What a private link changes is reach and revocability: the draft isn’t sitting on the public web where it can be found by someone who wasn’t looking for it, and you can withdraw access at a date you choose instead of hoping the file gets deleted. Copyright itself comes from having written the thing, not from how you sent it.
Not as-is. This hosts web pages, so what you upload is a self-contained HTML file, or a zip if images sit beside it. Getting there is usually one conversion step: most writers now have an AI turn the manuscript into a single styled page, or export to HTML from the tool they drafted in. It’s worth the step, because the result is something that reflows on a phone rather than a document your reader has to download and then fight with.
Yes, and for a beta round it’s the better setup. Publish the manuscript as separate documents, one per reader, each with its own password, its own expiry and its own view count. You then know which of the five have actually started, and you can close one link — a reader who went quiet, or one you’ve decided not to continue with — without disturbing the others.
You see how many times the link was opened, which is genuinely useful and also strictly limited: it tells you the page was loaded, not that anyone reached chapter three. Detailed analytics sit on the paid plans. Used honestly it saves an awkward message — a reader who hasn’t opened it in two weeks is a different conversation from one who has opened it six times.
Check what they ask for first — many have submission guidelines that specify a format and a delivery method, and a link is not always what they want. Where a link is welcome, this works well for the sample chapters an agent requests after a query: it opens on the first tap, it isn’t on the public web, and it can carry an expiry so a sample you sent two years ago isn’t still live. Follow their instructions over ours.
No — it’s the opposite end. Publishing is about being found by people who don’t know you exist. This is about handing a specific draft to specific people while it isn’t finished, with nothing listed anywhere and no public directory to browse. When the book is ready to be found, that’s a different tool and a different decision.
You can stop it being served: delete the document, or let an expiry close it, and the address stops working for everyone holding the link. What you can’t do — and no system can — is retrieve what someone already read or copied while it was open. That’s the argument for setting the expiry at the moment you send rather than deciding later.
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