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Beta Readers
Three things I’ve learned
I’ve finished my novel and sent it out to beta readers to find out if the plot held up, if the characters were consistent, if their arcs were visible, and if the book was overall entertaining. While I appreciated all the feedback, I learned three important things.
1 — Give the readers the cleanest copy possible. I was getting notification after notification of comments made to the Google document. I checked them and a good third were spelling errors and typos. Frustrated, I took the time to go through the document with keener eye, corrected all the typos, and sent an email to the beta readers apologizing for the inconvenience. I thought I’d read it through, but I clearly didn’t, not well enough. I wanted readers to point out what bothered them and not be tripped up by mindless, irritating errors.
2 — I shouldn’t have sent it as a shared Google document. I should have created a separate copy for each person and sent them that instead. While it was interesting to read people’s comments on top of comments, the cross talk wasn’t productive to me. Some readers tried to defend the problem others argued the problem. This would have been helpful if I was holding a round table discussion about the book, but not in the comments.
I’d wanted to know, more than anything else, what tripped the reader up and why. By having a shared…
