Nov 14, 2025
Mark interviews Florin Bulgarov, co-founder of Manuscript Report.
Prior to the interview, Mark shares comments from recent episodes, a personal update, and a word about this episode's sponsor.
This episode is sponsored by an affiliate link to Manuscript Report. Use code MARK10 at checkout and save 10% off your own personalized report.
In their interview, Mark and Florin talk about:
- Florin's background with a PhD in A.I. and how he ended up evolving into creating the toolset of Manuscript Report
- How Manuscript Report was initially created as an assessment tool for publishers when going through their slush piles
- What assets Manuscript Report offers for authors to use in their marketing strategy approaches
- The additional assets from the reports including the visual pie-chart of the genre split/breakdown as well as the themes and the tropes associated from the manuscript
- The social media posts, blog posts, and book bible assets that authors can request in a higher level report
- The fact that Manuscript Report does not store the manuscript and does not train any AI on their manuscript. Within 30 days all traces of the author's manuscript is deleted from their servers
- How the system is optimized to run for one book at a time and the 1 million word limit on manuscripts run into Manuscript Report
- The "Narrative Crossroads" suggestions that an author might be able to use in a quick pitch/log line for the book
- An author who did A/B testing with her own written ads and the Manuscript Report ads and was able to reduce her cost by half and increase her sales by 60%
- An example of a report using Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray
- How Manuscript Report is a Swiss Army Knife for marketing
- And more...
Links of Interest:
- YouTube Video of Interview (with visual walk-thru)
- EP 443 - Strategies for Short Fiction
- EP 442 - Writer You Still Need to Quit with Becca Syme
- EP 441 - A Bookstore for Indie Authors with Donovan Scherer
- EP 438 - A Personal Conversation with Malorie Cooper
- EP 437 - Nerding Out Over History, Science, and Maps with Malorie Cooper
- EP 429 - A Post-Mortem on Co-Hosting the 2025 Aurora Awards with Liz May Anderson
- Draft2Digital Self-Publishing Insiders: What to Quit, What to Keep, and What to Question with Becca Syme (YouTube)
- Manuscript Report (Mark's affiliate link)
- Buy Mark a Coffee
- Patreon for Stark Reflections
- Mark's YouTube channel
- ElevenLabs (AI Voice Generation - Affiliate link)
- Mark's Stark Reflections on Writing & Publishing Newsletter (Signup)
- An Author's Guide to Working With Bookstores and Libraries
- The Relaxed Author
- Publishing Pitfalls for Authors
- An Author's Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores
- Wide for the Win
- Mark's Canadian Werewolf Books
- The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles
- Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard
- Merry Christmas! Shitter Was Full!: A Trivia Guide to National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0