Identify Your Beta Readers
Three Readers You Need to Whip Your WIP Into Shape
“So I’m glad I got burned,
Think of all the things we learned,
For the people who are still alive.”
—GLaDOS
Important note: Beta in this case does not refer to a wolf pack’s hierarchical structure, in which beta wolves are subservient to alpha wolves. We’re talking beta as in the software release lifecycle. Beta reading, for a manuscript, is akin to the process of beta testing software—get the bugs out, make sure it holds up to end user scrutiny, so you know it’s safe to release.
In the software world, products in testing move from alpha to beta. Alpha software is usually buggy, and some of those bugs might be serious. All of the planned functionality might not be in yet, meaning some intended features may still be missing. The product may be skeletal, but you can start testing it.
Once you’re sure you’ve got all your features in and resolved the biggest, baddest bugs, you can release your software to beta testing. You know you still have bugs and performance issues—this is the time to identify those so you can fix them before you release your product to the wider world. You don’t want to release software with a serious bug that could cause it to fatally crash and lose users’ data or euthanize their faithful weighted companion cube.
As I discussed in Finding Your Audience and To Do Something Well, great writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum and never has. There was no magical before time in which writers wrote their stories and then released them, pristine and unsullied by outside feedback, to the adoring audience. Ask yourself whether you would spend time and money to buy and use software that hadn’t been through beta testing. Would you even trust it not to wreck your device?
If you accept that writing benefits from a beta phase just as software does, you may be wondering: Why, then, do we skip right to the beta reader? What about the alpha test? Where’s the article telling you how to find your alpha reader and get them to help you with your manuscript?
The alpha reader is you. Before you start looking for those beta readers to help you out with your writing, you need to do your own alpha testing. I have some future articles coming up on just how to do that—how to alpha read your own manuscript effectively to get it ready for beta—as well as on how to beta read the work of others if you are asked to do so. Today I’ll focus on how to identify the correct beta readers for your work so that when it’s ready, you’ll know just who to solicit.
In case you are not a software developer, here are the key aspects of the beta-testing phase:
Real end users are doing the testing, and
Testing is done in a production environment (not in a lab or staging environment), to
Find all the bugs that remain after alpha,
Identify usability issues that prevent task completion, and
See how the software holds up under a real workload.
As in software beta testing, the purpose of manuscript beta reading is to identify the bugs remaining in your work that need to be ironed out to get your manuscript to a quality where you can begin releasing it. If you want to publish traditionally, then you’d be aiming to get to the level of quality that you could release to an agent or acquiring editor. If you’re self-publishing, you’re trying to get to a level of quality that will allow you to skip over an expensive developmental edit and go right to copyediting.
Your alpha read should have taken care of the worst bugs—the game-breaking errors, the critical failures. Hopefully you caught all the big plot holes, points of view that suddenly changed, or multiple supporting characters with the same name. Your beta readers are coming behind you in the role of the end user to check for the things you won’t be able to see for yourself: Places where the writing is confusing, where it bogs down in exposition and gets boring, where the pacing is uneven, where you dropped in a tantalizing detail and then never followed up, and so on.
It’s important to note that the beta reader is not a professional development editor, copyeditor, or proofreader. They’re not looking for grammar mistakes or helping you wordsmith your language. That level of editing comes later in the process and it’s helpful to remind new beta readers not to concern themselves with that kind of thing. You want to get a real reader’s take on your draft.
So: Who do you need to do the beta read deed?
Build Your Stable
You’re going to need more than one beta reader. Whether you’re prolific and spit out a lot of short fiction quickly or you write one full-length novel every ten years, you need a variety of people reading each piece to get different perspectives and prevent overreliance on the same few people. Keep in mind that when you ask someone to beta read your work, you’re asking for a favor from them first and foremost. You may be giving a gift to them as well, in the form of early access to your writing, but primarily they’re doing something for you. So be mindful of the time and energy you are asking someone to put into your work and make sure to spread that happy burden around.
Before we start looking at particular archetypes that make good beta readers, fix in your mind the handful of qualities that you’re looking for in any beta reader:
Reliable—someone who follows through and does what they say they will do.
Has time—everyone’s busy, but don’t tap your busiest friends if you know they don’t have time to read.
Enjoys reading—people who like to read and read regularly. You won’t get good feedback from someone who doesn’t like to read.
Honest and direct—pick people you know to be forthright with their opinions. You’re looking for actionable feedback.
Now, take stock of your friends, loved ones, friendly acquaintances, friends-of-friends, and fans. See if any of the following people are among the crowd. First I’ll suggest the top three readers to court and acquire, and then I’ll share a couple to handle with extreme caution.
Readers You Need
The Bibliophile
This is someone who reads several books a month, who is often juggling a few different books at a time, and whose Goodreads feed updates as often as most people’s Facebook feed. They read every day and always have a book recommendation ready to offer—and they’re open to recommendations, as well. While this person has a to-read list a mile deep, if they’re willing and able to make time for your manuscript they can provide excellent feedback. Reading a high volume of books, whether critically or casually, has given them a firm understanding of good storytelling and their tastes are well developed.
Look for someone who reads a wide variety of books, not just the type of book you’re writing. Someone who reads a mix of fiction and nonfiction, short-form and long-form writing, young adult and adult fiction, all kinds of genres and subjects. That’s a sign of an open mind when it comes to their media, which is exactly what you want.
As a bonus, this reader will probably get through your manuscript quickly because it seems like they’re always reading.
Tips for working with the Bibliophile: Have a compelling elevator pitch polished and ready to sell them on reading your manuscript. They read a lot of books and you want yours to jump to the top of their to-read list. Give them a reason to read beyond “I need a favor.”
Your Target Reader
This is a reader who reads mostly in the genre in which you are writing and, if you can swing it, is already a fan of one or all of your comparable titles (comps). So if you’ve written a space opera, you’re looking for someone who mainly reads science fiction, who specifically reads (or has read a lot of) space operas, and who generally enjoys the ones you think are good and generally dislikes the ones you think are bad.
A quick way to make a shortlist for this reader, if you have a Goodreads account, is to navigate to each of your comps while logged in and just see if any of your friends have read them and rated them highly (friends’ reviews sort to the top on Goodreads). If I wrote a novel about a bounty hunter—which, spoiler alert, I did—I could look up One for the Money by Janet Evanovich to see if I know anyone who read and liked it. Someone who likes Stephanie Plum would be an excellent candidate to like my book, too, if my book is good—and also likely to notice the ways in which it does not measure up to the comp.
Tips for working with Your Target Reader: Be up front with them about your comps—let them know what books you see as your competitors so they can keep that in mind while reading. Don’t forget to tell them you value their opinion as a genre expert.
The Hater
Do you know someone who finds something to complain about in every book they read, every movie they see, and every TV show they watch? Who never gives anything an unqualified five-star rating? The person you hesitate to recommend a book to, because you’re afraid it will just disappoint them? Write that person’s name down and underline it twice.
This is a beta reader you absolutely need to have in your arsenal. This person spots the weakness in every scrap of media they consume, and they know how to point it out in a succinct way, and they love doing it. If your manuscript has a weak point, they’re going to find it. They won’t spare your feelings. They will let you know exactly what isn’t working for them, and that’s the kind of feedback you can act on to improve your writing dramatically.
Tips for working with the Hater: Whatever you do, don’t get defensive. The last thing you want to do is signal to this reader that you don’t value their critical feedback. Don’t argue with them. If you do, you won’t receive this boon from them again.
Readers to Use With Caution
Your Editor Friend
This could be a pro editor or an amateur editor. When I say “amateur editor” I don’t mean it in a condescending way, as in “an editor who is amateurish.” I mean someone who is not a professional editor but who has editorial tendencies.
Exercise extreme caution in tapping your editor friend for this job. Maybe you’re thinking, sweet, I know an editor—I can ask them to be my beta reader and they’ll be like a super beta reader and I’ll get some copyediting at the same time. Don’t ask your professional editor friend. You want someone who is an end user beta reading your work—an actual, casual reader and not a professional. Plus, your professional editor friend does this for a living. Don’t ask for free service.
Many of us have an editor-ish friend. The one who points out when a store’s signage has an apostrophe where it shouldn’t and always notices when a restaurant menu has a typo. They may seem like a strong pick to beta read your manuscript because of their tendency to copyedit in the wild, but that’s not what you’re looking for at this stage. It’s challenging for me, with a copyediting background, to look past misspellings, grammatical mistakes, and writing tics or idiosyncrasies and focus on the major stuff. You can’t copyedit and beta read at the same time.
Tips for working with Your Editor Friend: Be abundantly clear that you’re looking not for copyediting but for major issues. Make a list of particular feedback you’d like to receive to keep this reader focused on the big picture.
Your Biggest Fan
Everybody likes to hear that their writing is amazing. No question. That feels great. You might be inclined to give your manuscript to your dad, your grandma, your best friend, your spouse—someone who is going to love it because you wrote it and won’t trash it because, let’s be real, they have to live with you. Think carefully before you solicit this person as a beta, and use them strategically if you decide to use them at all.
A beta response that comes back “It’s perfect! I love it! Can’t wait to see it in print!” gives you an ego boost, but it doesn’t help you improve your work in any way. It’s fine to reach out for this ego boost as long as you are prepared to accept it for what it is. Don’t let it overwhelm or overwrite the other feedback you get.
If you get actionable feedback from three people and a big thumbs-up-gold-star response from your Fan,
And then decide that you’re going to take the Fan’s feedback instead of the actionable feedback from your other readers,
Then you just wasted everybody’s time and you also shot your manuscript in the foot.
Nobody bangs out a finished masterpiece on the first, second, third, fourth draft. Nobody’s draft doesn’t need work. Getting critical feedback from your beta readers is rough, but that’s the road to a publication-quality manuscript. If you want some encouragement to keep you motivated, then by all means get this reader to take a look. Just don’t take their response as confirmation of your sense that the manuscript is already as good as it can possibly be.
Tips for working with Your Biggest Fan: Enjoy the praise you get but don’t let it go to your head.
Give Thanks
One final word on beta reading—for this article, anyway. (There’s a lot more to say on the topic of beta reading in general.) Make sure you thank your beta readers appropriately for the feedback they give you. Whether you’re a brand-new, struggling writer or you’re Stephen King, your beta readers do you a huge solid. Don’t let it go unrewarded.
Send them a note of thanks—an email is great but if you have their snail mail address, a card would be thoughtful.
If you can swing it, send them a gift card—$5 at their favorite coffee shop to enjoy a latte while they unwind from reading your draft, perhaps.
Acknowledge them formally—this is what the acknowledgments page is for, so make sure you include your beta readers before the book goes to press. Pro tip: Find out from each one how they would like to be acknowledged—everyone has different expectations of privacy.
Gift them a copy of your book—if your book makes it to publication, make sure your beta readers get a copy (print or electronic) to thank them for helping you on the journey.
TL;DR: Pick the right beta readers, and treat them well, to get the feedback you need to take your writing to the next level.
Coming up on Thursday: You asked for it—one of you asked for it—so I wrote it. A look at some of the oft-cited, hard-and-fast rules of writing that you can—and should!—break with reckless abandon, plus advice on how to break them stylishly. Looking for permission to be a writing rebel? I’ve got it for you in two short days. Subscribe so you don’t miss it!
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