How to get the best from your beta readers

How to find, keep, and best utilise beta readers, while keeping everyone happy!

Are beta readers necessary?

In a word: yes. From the typo that’s hard to spot in your own work (I recently used “hear” instead of “here” right at the start of my novel and hadn’t noticed!) to the structural points that are only clear at a distance (why is that character suddenly in Madrid? Weren’t they in London in the last chapter?), a fresh set of eyes is essential. As writers, we have lived with this plot and these characters for so long that we know them inside out. We don’t always notice that we haven’t made something clear, because we’re so used to it.

Beta readers will come at your novel simply as a reader, whether that’s the person who’s bought it at their local book shop, or whether it’s the agent you’re querying. Their insight will show you how those readers will likely respond to your book. Picking up any issues at the editing stage gives you a much greater chance of success further down the line.

When is the right time to send your novel to beta readers?

I think the best time is somewhere in the middle of the editing process. If you send off your first, raw draft, your readers are likely to come back with a lot of things that you would pick up on yourself during your first edit: a lot of the typos, characters called by the wrong name, scenes that run too long, a description that’s overly complicated, things like that.

But if you send to beta readers when you’ve done two or three whole-book edits and you’re really happy with the manuscript at a sentence level, it can be much harder to accept and action feedback. It’s much easier to delete a chapter if you haven’t spent twenty hours poring over the exact word placement in each sentence. Killing our darlings is easier the less time we’ve spent with them. Plus, our time is precious. We don’t want to waste time perfecting a sentence that later gets deleted.

For the novel I’m currently working on, I wrote my first draft, then printed out the whole thing on paper and went through it quickly, over two days, to pick up structural things, scrawling in things like: make this scene longer, or, show more physical attraction here. Then I spent a few weeks making those changes, and doing a bit of closer editing, but not too much. Then I sent it out to beta readers. I’m currently waiting for their feedback — eek!

Choose the right readers

Having the right people test-read your story is essential. My first advice is super practical: never ask someone you know in real life to beta read unless they specifically ask to. This will save you a lot of awkwardness from someone who doesn’t really want to read it, is too polite to give you helpful feedback, or is otherwise too close to you to be helpful. If someone’s going to ghost your book, let it be a stranger. Don’t put that strain on a real-life relationship. If someone specifically asks to read it, though, especially if they ask more than once — go for it! They brought it on themselves!

The second thing to consider is: how many beta readers should you send your book to? You need enough that different areas are likely to be picked up on, to give you an idea of which things are a trend, and to fill in the gaps for the inevitable one or two people who say they will read and give feedback but don’t follow through. But if you have too many beta readers, you’ll likely be swamped with different opinions, and have too many things picked up on. Remember, you can’t please everyone. What you’re looking for is a broad scope of opinions, enough people that errors are picked up on, and a general consensus of what’s working and what isn’t. Hopefully your readers will broadly give you the same kind of feedback. That’s when you know it’s definitely worth paying attention to. I recommend five or six betas.

Who to ask? I think there are two types of beta readers who will be helpful: those who are approaching your text as writers, and those who are approaching it as readers. For the readers, it doesn’t matter if they’ve not written a story since they were eleven. But what’s important is that they read voraciously. These betas need to know your genre inside out. They should be your target audience. If you’re writing a thriller, they need to read plenty of thrillers every year.

As for your writer-betas, choose writers whose work you admire. They don’t need to be writing in similar genres to you. In fact, a degree of separation is probably helpful, here. These are the ones you’re hoping will pick up on your accidental changes of POV, your tense switches, your cliches and your mixed metaphors. They’ll be best place to notice where they’re losing interest in the dialogue and why.

A caveat: work with what you’ve got! A handful of your ideal beta readers is not always going to present itself, especially if you’re earlier on in your writing journey. Engaging with the writing community on social media and blogs will help to build those connections. But don’t stress if your ideal beta readers don’t come forward. Anybody who is willing to invest time in reading and critiquing your work is valuable. Treat them as such!

Be clear about a timeframe

This is something I learned just a little too late. It wasn’t until one of my beta readers came back to ask me when I was hoping to get their feedback that I realised I should have discussed this with all of my beta readers initially. In all honesty, I was hoping that my novel would be so absorbing that they would all read through it so fast and I’d be happily working through my edits a week later. But people have busy lives. People forget. So do suggest the timeframe you’re hoping for upfront. But be generous. These people are giving you their time and thoughts for free, so don’t be too demanding on them. That said, if the agreed-upon time has passed and you’ve not heard anything, it is fine to give them a gentle nudge. Just don’t continually nudge. You might get ghosted, and that’s OK. Just move on. Choosing beta readers carefully, though, can help to avoid this.

Give your beta readers questions in advance

I saved the best for last! As I was writing my first draft, I kept thinking things like ‘is this too much dialogue?’, ‘will the reader even care about this relationship?’ and ‘is my main character’s voice strong enough?’. These types of questions are really hard to answer yourself, when the characters have been living inside your brain. So I wrote all these questions down, and they formed the list of questions I sent to my beta readers with my manuscript.

Giving your test readers questions will also help to anchor their feedback and avoid things like ‘Hi Katie, thanks for sending me your book to read. I really enjoyed it. Love from Bee Ta.’ If you think it’d be helpful, I can come up with a list of general questions to include on your list to send to betas. Drop a comment if you’d like that! Don’t forget to reassure your readers that you want constructive criticism. That that’s the whole point of the exercise, and they don’t need to worry about offending you.

Actioning the feedback

Once you’ve got your feedback, well, back, it’s time to put it into action! I recommend reading through all the comments in one sitting, then turning away from the project. Go for a walk, do the washing up, pick your kids up from school, and let those thoughts percolate. See what sticks. What makes you think ‘oooh, yeah, why didn’t I see that?’. Dive in to those edits first. Then work on the things that several of your betas have brought up. If two or three say that chapter six moves too slowly, that’s definitely something to address.

Finally, read through the other comments again. Where only one reader has raised something, see if that comment sits well with you, if you think it will serve the work. If so, great, make that change. If not, it’s fine to disagree and move on. The same goes where you have contradictory opinions. One reader thinks that Mr Right is so romantic in chapter twenty-two, whilst another thinks it reads totally flat. Read through the comments again, read through that piece of your manuscript again, and make a judgement call. You’re the writer. You get to decide.

There! That’s enough beta reader advice for one post, I think! Were these thoughts helpful? Do let me know in the comments! What has your experience with beta readers been like? I’d love to hear!

An Awkward Thing

So, this is awkward, but I do need to pay my bills. Writing is my day job. I want to keep my posts free so that as many people as possible can benefit from them, especially all my writing advice. But, free posts won’t keep my kids in school shoes. So, if you’ve found this post enjoyable or helpful, would you consider buying me a coffee, or taking a look at my editing and critique services? Thanks!