Divisions at Penguin Random House U.S. (PRH): Crown Publishing Group, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Penguin Publishing Group, Penguin Young Readers, PRH Christian, Random House Children’s Books, Random House Publishing Group, and Zeitgeist. 

These divisions have developed a standardized procedure for involving authenticity readers in our publishing process as a way to prioritize our readers and endeavor to portray characters, cultures, settings, and lived experiences as authentically as possible.

You may be asked to read a full manuscript; a passage, chapter, or scene from a larger work; a short story; or art that accompanies a manuscript, whether interior or cover. You may also be asked to review marketing/publicity materials and/or descriptive copy, for which you will be entitled to an additional fee.

Our questionnaire gathers contact information, details on lived experiences/area(s) of expertise, and credentials (if applicable) of potential authenticity readers. By filling out the questionnaire, you are agreeing to be added to our internal Penguin Random House U.S. Authenticity Reader Database. This would mean that your information would be stored in our database and available to all of the publishing divisions in the company if they are looking for a reader of your particular lived experience. The database is confidential, and only a few PRH U.S. employees will have access to your name and email. Your inclusion is entirely voluntary. You can also ask to have your information removed at any time by emailing AuthenticityReads@penguinrandomhouse.com.

Our imprint/division’s editors will contact you if you’re being considered for a project. Once it’s been determined that you meet the criteria for the project and you’ve come to an agreement on the terms of the project (schedule, fee, and feedback format), you’ll be put in touch with your editorial liaison. This will be either the editor or the editorial assistant working on the book you have been assigned. You will also be asked to sign a contract that specifies the terms of the project. The contract includes a nondisclosure agreement (NDA). After the contract is signed, the editorial liaison will send you the manuscript.

The PRH U.S. divisions are currently negotiating fees on a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration the length of the work and the timeline of the project, among other relevant factors.

This will be agreed upon ahead of time and specified in your contract. Ideally, editors will factor into their process roughly a month for a read, but situations and schedules vary, and time crunches can and do occur. Any project with a truncated timeline is considered a rush project and would qualify you for a rush rate.

Unless specifically approved in writing by PRH, you will not, directly or indirectly, ingest, input, copy, or otherwise use any content, data, or information provided by PRH or created by you for or at the request of PRH, into any artificial intelligence software, model, or tool (collectively, "AI Models"; such as, but not limited to, ChatGPT, Gemini, Midjourney, Anthropic), as this could result in unauthorized training of such AI Models with PRH’s proprietary content, and may subject such proprietary content to unauthorized, pre-publication exposure and copyright infringement.

The level of feedback required will be agreed on ahead of time and written into your contract. Manuscripts are typically formatted as Microsoft Word files, but there is flexibility depending on the project and/or your needs. Depending on the editor’s concerns and the phase of the project, they may be looking for different levels of feedback ranging from a report on overarching issues to line-level feedback, which can be provided via comments and notations in Track Changes.

We look forward to your honest feedback. The purpose of our seeking outside readers is to achieve the most authentic portrayal possible and to catch any missteps we might have inadvertently made, so no points of criticism or questioning will be taken negatively.

Please keep in mind that your editorial liaison may contact you requesting clarification on your notes, along with any requests for a follow-up read.

After turning in your feedback, you will need to submit your invoice. For detailed information on how to submit an invoice, please visit the Best Practices for Authenticity Readers page. If this is your first time working with PRH, you will also receive the forms required by Accounts Payable (AP) to set you up in our payroll system. As per your contract, you will be paid upon the delivery and acceptance of your feedback and invoice. Once you’re in our system, AP will send you the relevant paperwork for your tax forms at the end of the calendar year.

Your feedback is proprietary to the imprint. Our publishing team will take your feedback into consideration and use what they think will benefit the work. It is the editor’s prerogative how they will share it with the author. The author will not know your identity, nor will you be in touch with them unless otherwise agreed upon. Regardless of our response, you will in no way be held accountable for the content of or reactions to the final book.

Will my name be mentioned in the book (e.g., in the acknowledgments) or in public conversations about the book?

Our contract agreement includes an NDA, which protects your identity and involvement in the project. If an author wishes to mention you in the acknowledgments, the editor will be in touch to discuss your comfort level and get your consent before doing so.

Please consult your editorial liaison regarding queries about acknowledgments and/or listing your work for Penguin Random House on your resume, CV, or website.

We are storing your information in a private Survey Monkey database, to which only a select group of administrators have full access. This means they can see your name and email along with your personal information. All PRH U.S. editors will have access to your answers (to ensure our authenticity readers have the best chance of being matched with a potential authenticity read), but they won’t see your full name and email until they select you as a candidate. All of your information is stored securely and will only be used as one of several factors in selecting a candidate and eventually hiring an authenticity reader.

Approximately every two years, authenticity readers in our database can expect to hear from us to confirm that they would like to stay in the database.

While you are in the questionnaire, you may go back to previous questions and change your answers until you click “Done” and submit the questionnaire.

After that, if you experience any life changes or change your mind on what you would like to share with us, you can revisit the link at any time to update your answers, as long as you don’t delete cookies associated with the questionnaire website. As a backup, we recommend copying and pasting your answers somewhere in case you do delete your cookies.

To remove your personal information completely from our database, please email us at AuthenticityReads@penguinrandomhouse.com.

We have parameters in place to ensure that we adhere to local privacy and employment laws. If you feel you have been mistakenly disqualified, please contact us at AuthenticityReads@penguinrandomhouse.com and we would be happy to discuss it with you further.

After clicking “Done” on the questionnaire, you should have seen a message which states: “Thank you for taking the time to complete our questionnaire! This page serves as your confirmation that you have been added to the Authenticity Reader Database. Someone will contact you if you match our needs for an authenticity reader.” If you didn’t see this message, or are not sure, you may contact us at AuthenticityReads@penguinrandomhouse.com to confirm.

If you do not submit your questionnaire properly, we may reach out to ask if you would like to finish it. If we do not hear back within fourteen (14) business days, we will delete incomplete questionnaires to assure data privacy. Please check your Junk folder and/or add AuthenticityReads@penguinrandomhouse.com to your safe senders list.

If you started the questionnaire but were unable to complete it, you should be able to return to your questionnaire with the same link. If you have not cleared your cache/cookies, your existing questionnaire answers should populate so you do not have to start from scratch. Please feel free to reach out to AuthenticityReads@penguinrandomhouse.com for additional troubleshooting.

Can I share the questionnaire link with others whom I think might be good candidates for becoming authenticity readers?

Yes, we would love for you to spread the word to your colleagues, friends, and family. Please feel free to share this link so that they have access to the FAQ and Best Practices pages.

If you have questions or concerns at any point in the process, or if you’d like to have your information removed from the database, you are welcome to reach out to AuthenticityReads@penguinrandomhouse.com.