How to run a beta-reader round

A beta reader is someone who reads your book the way a reader will, before it is published, and tells you what it was like. Run well, a round of beta readers finds the problems you have gone blind to. Run badly, it produces six contradictory opinions and a month of rewriting for each of them. The difference is almost entirely in what you ask.

What beta readers are for

Reactions, not corrections. Beta readers tell you where they were bored, confused, delighted or lost; where they stopped believing; which character they would follow anywhere. They are not proofreaders, and a reader who returns a manuscript full of comma corrections has usually been given the wrong instructions, or the wrong draft.

When to ask, and how many

Ask after the second draft: the first draft is for you, and the problems it has are problems you already know about. Ask before a paid editor, so the editor’s time goes on what readers could not find. Three to six readers is enough to see patterns and few enough to answer. Choose people who read your kind of book for pleasure, and not only people who love you; your mother is allowed to be one of the six, not all of them.

What to give them

Give them the whole book, or the whole first act if you want an early signal on the opening. Give them a way to read that is easy on a phone and does not require printing or installing anything; a read-only link beats a file they have to open in the right program. Give them a deadline, three or four weeks, and a short note that says what kind of book it is and what you want from them. Then leave them alone until the deadline.

The questions that work

Avoid “Did you like it?”, which gets kindness. Ask questions that have specific answers:

• Where did you stop reading for the night, and was it hard to come back?
• Where were you confused, even for a moment?
• Which character did you care about most, and when did that start?
• What did you think was going to happen? Where were you wrong, and did that please you?
• Where did you skim?
• Was there anywhere you did not believe a person would do that?

Ask them to leave a mark in the margin at the moment a reaction happens rather than summarising afterwards. A comment that says “lost here” on page forty is worth more than a paragraph of overall impressions.

How to read the feedback

Look for patterns: a note from one reader is a data point, from two it is a lead, from three it is a problem. Separate the symptom from the prescription. Readers are nearly always right about where something is wrong and often wrong about how to fix it; “cut the sister” may mean the sister’s first scene gives her nothing to want. Thank every reader, by name in the acknowledgements if they are willing, and do not argue with any of them. The book will do the arguing in its next draft.

Next: Formatting a manuscript for print and ebook: what actually matters