For novelists who need a real reader
Find the reader your book has been waiting for.
Marginalia pairs you with a writer who wants to read the kind of book you wrote — and wrote the kind of book you want to read. You trade chapters a few thousand words at a time, leave each other real notes, and the pages disappear after two weeks.
No password to remember — we email you a link.
How a swap works
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1
Describe your book
Genre, category, stage, word count, the logline — and the content warnings a reader should know about before they say yes.
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2
Say what you'd read
The genres you'll happily take on, the ones you won't, and how many words you can realistically read at a time.
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3
Meet your matches
We rank writers by how well the trade works in both directions, and show you exactly why each one scored what it did.
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4
Talk, then trade
Message first to see if you click — over Zoom if you'd rather. Then send your first chapter and start swapping.
The two rules
Everything else is just a message board. These are what make it a swap.
Your pages burn after fourteen days.
Every chapter you send carries a countdown. When it runs out, the text is deleted — not hidden, not archived. Your unpublished manuscript doesn't sit on a stranger's screen indefinitely, which is the thing that stops most writers sharing at all.
The notes you receive are yours to keep. Feedback you earned shouldn't expire with the draft it was about.
Nobody gets ahead.
You can't send your next chapter while you still owe your partner notes — and you can't send it while they still owe you theirs. The swap stays strictly turn-based.
That second half is the one people forget. It means you can never end up eleven chapters deep with someone who quietly stopped reading after chapter one.
Your boundaries are boundaries
Content warnings you've said no to are a hard filter, not a soft preference. Those books never reach your match list, however well they'd otherwise fit.
Good critics find each other
Rate the feedback you receive on depth, usefulness and care. Writers who give generous notes are matched with others who do the same.
Talk it through, optionally
Some notes want a conversation. Add a meeting link to your swap and jump on a call — entirely up to the two of you.
Somebody out there is dying to read exactly what you wrote.
It takes about three minutes to describe your book and the kind of book you'd read.