Volumes is built by Podforge, a small company. I make it with the help of a small circle of readers and collaborators. I build slowly. I listen to feedback openly. I answer email.
Volumes started because my son couldn't read the way school expected him to. He's dyslexic. The apps I found for him were either patronising or obsessed with speed, and none of them checked whether he'd understood a word. I'm ADHD myself, and I recognised the same gap from the other direction: I could read fast, but I wasn't always sure I was reading well.
So I built a small Android app that paired RSVP pacing with hand-written comprehension questions. The metric it showed was not speed, but speed multiplied by understanding. It turned out other readers wanted that too. Volumes 1.0 launched Spring, 2026.
The eWPM idea isn't new. It's a small remix of two long-standing reading research traditions: comprehension-corrected reading rate (Carver, 1990) and rapid serial visual presentation (Potter, 1984; Rayner, 1998). What's new is treating the product of the two as the only number worth showing.
Speed without comprehension isn't reading. It's a kind of looking. That's the thread running through Carver's work, and it's the principle Volumes is built on.
The full bibliography lives inside the app, in The Study. I cite the studies I lean on, and the studies I don't.
Roughly one in five readers has a sensory or visual processing difference that makes standard reading apps actively hostile. Volumes treats those readers as the centre, not the edge case. OpenDyslexic and Irlen-spectrum overlays are first-class reading modes. Pacing slows automatically when comprehension dips, never the reverse. Notifications are capped at two a day. Streaks can be switched off entirely.
If something doesn't work for you, write to me. The next release usually addresses the most-asked-about thing.
I build Volumes with Una. Between us we write the code, the copy, the quizzes and everything else. There are no departments. We just make the thing. Total Football but with books!
The reading engine is free. All three reading modes, comprehension testing, your eWPM score and the first text in each curated collection cost nothing. You can learn to read more effectively without paying a penny.
Free readers see occasional, non-intrusive ads between sessions. Ads never appear during reading. Your reading time is yours.
Premium removes ads entirely and unlocks the full curated library. Monthly, yearly and lifetime plans are available, all with a free trial. That's the deal. There's no drip-feed of locked features, no "upgrade to keep your stats" and no artificial ceiling on the free experience.
What Volumes collects and why is spelled out plainly in the privacy policy, which is written in English, not legalese.
If Volumes ever asks you to subscribe to keep your reading history, that's the day I've lost the plot. I've put a clause in the company articles to make that hard.
Email hello@volumesreadingapp.com. I read every message; replies tend to come within a day or two.
Bug reports, suggestions for The Reading Room and very-long-winded emails about Marcus Aurelius are all welcome.
2024, Devon, UK.
Podforge Ltd. One founder, no investors.