Beta readers are the backbone to any good story. They are the individuals who get the read your work before anyone else and they are the ones that ultimately decide if your work succeeds or fails.
Now you may be thinking that's a lot of power to be giving to just a small handful of people, but let me explain it like this:
Imagine you just spent countless hours creating a novel. You give that novel to a few close friends and family members who tell you it's amazing and they are proud of you. You go to publish the novel and find out a few days after it's release that the people buying your novel, aren't too thrilled with it. Now why could that be?
Well, let's look at the facts - Your friends and family love you, they care about you, and they know how hard you've been working on this. More often than not, they will tell you it's amazing even when it's not. Now they aren't doing this to try and be malicious, they are simply trying to be supportive.
Take a look at a different scenario: Imagine you just spent countless hours creating a novel. You give that novel to a few writing acquaintances and few people who volunteered online. You're given constructive feedback and use that feedback to alter your draft before sending it off to your editor. Down the line, when your novel is published, it sells well.
The reason why your novel sells well in the second scenario is because strangers don't really have any obligation to protect your feelings. They will tell you what they think without pause. And individuals within a writing community will give you the same sort of constructive feedback they would want on their work.
So who should be a beta reader?
It's totally fine to have friends and family beta read for you, but just remember that their opinions might be biased since they have a relationship with you. The people you want to beta read for you are people who volunteer online to beta read and other writers. How do you find these people? You'd be surprised at how many people jump at the chance to be a beta reader. All you simply have to do is have a social media presence and put out a post asking if anyone would like to be one. Getting other people in the writing community is a lot harder though. They are working on their own projects and often can't be bothered to help with yours. So it's important to start building relationships with these individuals early on. Chat often with them, sound board with one another, build a genuine connection before asking them for a favor. Also understand that it's common courtesy to return the favor when they eventually ask you as well.
WARNING: NEVER pay for a beta reader. Beta readers are easy enough to find for free that you should never have to pay for one. Down the road there are individuals called arc readers, those re a different story.
So you found your beta readers, they read your work and gave you feedback, now what?
If you're a smart writer, you'll take their feedback and apply it to your WIP. Now you don't have to take every piece of advice. You need to use your best judgement in order to make your novel better. But if you spent all that time working with beta readers to not change a single thing in your WIP, either you're doing something wrong or you a prodigy writer - and no offense but I'm pretty sure you're doing something wrong.
At the end of the read through, make sure to ask your beta readers their overall thoughts on your work and then use quotes from that to promote your work as you continue to edit. Doing this will start to build the hype for your novel. Simply sharing a single quote a week can get people interested.
If you worked really well with a certain beta reader, you can even ask if they would be able to arc read for you. Showing an earlier quote from them alongside a new revised quote when your work is finished will really show your growth and build anticipation.
So what are we going to discuss next week?
Next on the list is how to clip scenes and passages from your WIP to use as teasers to promote your work.
For this week though, you have homework: Start making connections to other writers. They are your support beam. Often times writing is thought of as a solitary activity, but writers grow and flourish when they able to work with one another. So reach out to others, find people inside and outside of your genre to connect to. Make a genuine friendship and help one another grow.
I hope you enjoyed this Workshop Wednesday post and keep your eyes peeled for our Follow-up Friday post where Plotbunny will go into detail about how she finds beta readers.
Love always,
Novella & Plotbunny
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