Waypoint Readers
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About · The method
How we make a graded reader.
Most "graded readers" sit somewhere between a textbook and a Wikipedia summary. Waypoint titles are written like books — by people who like books — but on rails that keep each one honest at its level. Here's the workflow that gets them there.
01
Start from the source.
Most Waypoint titles begin as a public-domain novel — a book whose copyright has run, freeing us to retell it. We also commission Waypoint originals (devotionals, licensed works) that go through the same grading and production pipeline. Every title, whatever its source, gets the same Story Bible treatment: load-bearing scenes identified, characters pinned, chapter goals set.
02
Cap the vocabulary.
Each CEFR level has a hard vocabulary list — frequency-banded, hand-curated. A1 sits inside the most common ~500 Spanish words; A2 around ~1,500; B1 around ~3,000. The author drafts each chapter against the list. Anything outside it has to earn its place with a glossary entry.
03
Cap the grammar.
A1 is present-tense leaning; A2 introduces the past; B1 opens up the future, the perfect, and the subjunctive in measured doses. We check each chapter against a grammar window before it ships — if a structure isn't yet in-scope, the sentence is rewritten.
04
Illustrate every beat.
Painterly oil-style plates, one per body paragraph at A1, three per chapter at higher levels. The art is generated from prompts pinned to the actual prose, so each image enacts what the reader is about to read.
05
Narrate it with AI.
Every chapter ships with studio-quality synthetic audio in a neutral LatAm Spanish voice, generated by ElevenLabs. Tempo and tone are tuned per paragraph using a steering plan. A1 reads a touch slowly; B1 reads at conversational pace.
06
Ship as a book.
The final pack is a single EPUB (and audiobook M4B) available to read on the web today. Yours forever. DRM-free. No subscription required to read what you've bought. Native iOS and Android apps are in development.
Proof, by the numbers
The levels actually mean something.
85%+ of each level's vocabulary is new vs. the rung below (pairwise glossary Jaccard 0.06–0.15). A2 is the first rung where the narrative switches into the past; B1 is the first with full mainstream grammar — future, perfect, subjunctive. Graded editions across every published CEFR level are live today.
A1
~500 words
Present
Live now
A2
~1,500 words
+ Past
In progress
B1
~3,000 words
+ Future, perfect, subj.
In progress
B2
~5,000 words
Full surface
In progress
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Waypoint Readers
Classic novels and Waypoint originals in graded English, Spanish, and French. Madrid · 40° 25′ N · 3° 42′ W.
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