Have you heard the term “beta reader”? If so, you might be wondering: what is a beta reader? Answer: Every author needs feedback from people who read their book BEFORE it’s published, and those people are called beta readers. (I guess the author is the alpha reader.) Why do you need beta readers? When you write a book mostly you know what you’re trying to say, but that doesn’t mean that you’ve actually said it, or that you’ve said it in a way that someone else can understand. When you read it back, you know what it means, because you wrote it, and you can never read it the way someone who doesn’t already know what it’s saying will read it. It’s quite possible that what you’ve written does not come across to your readers the way you thought it would. There is only one way to find out if you’ve said what you thought you said, and that’s to get someone (preferably several someones) to read it for you and give you feedback. This is what a beta reader does. They also give you … [Read more...]
The best beta readers are the most critical.
When you ask someone to read your work, I suggest that you take the attitude that their criticisms will help you to make your book better. You should look forward to their criticism and understand that the harsher they seem, the better your book will be when you have fixed the problems. It’s better to have the criticism before it’s published than afterwards when it’s too late to fix it. This is why the best beta readers are the most critical and I always tell mine to be very critical and not to feel that they will hurt my feelings. Here are my suggestions for the kind of things you can ask them to look at. If you lose interest, please stop reading & I’ll send you a revised edition later. Tell me where I lost you. In general, does the story/plot work? Is there anywhere where it wanders or seems unclear or irrelevant? Is the beginning engaging? Does it make you want to read on? If not, why? Do you have any suggestions for improvement? Were any of the sections too slow? Were you … [Read more...]
