Beta readers get the manuscript, not a copy of it

A novelist sends a draft to five beta readers. Five PDFs go out. From that moment, five PDFs are out of the author's control: forwarded, uploaded, fed to a summarizer.

Instead, the draft is open in a reader on a display inside the author's container. Each beta reader gets the display URL with ?readonly=true&file_transfer=false, behind a password group whose permissions allow that one display and deny the files service entirely. They open it, scroll, read. They can't download the file; no file ever reaches their device. They can't copy a chapter out; the session rejects their input.

They send notes by email, as they always did. When the round ends, the group is deleted and five URLs stop working.

No DRM wrapper, no watermarked PDFs, no trust exercise. The manuscript is read on your computer, not theirs.

The manuscript is read on your computer, not theirs.