Beta reading is an important step in your manuscript’s editorial journey, before any assessments, developmental editing, line, or copyediting begins.
Just as software and app developers utilize beta users to test early versions of products to work out bugs and optimize user experience, beta readers give you a sneak peek into how future readers will view, react, and interact with your text, and give you valuable data points to dive into deeper developmental editing.
Beta Reading
My beta reading service provides you my opinion and experience interacting with your manuscript as a reader. This is a very different service from Developmental Editing and Manuscript Assessments, as I don’t apply editorial analysis, suggested editing plans, or direct edits. Rather, I provide my feedback as an expert reader on my emotional reaction and experience with your story.
Simple
$0.005/cents per word
Provided as a holistic report (typically 5-10 pages) that covers aspects such as :
- Readability: Was pacing consistent? Did I feel hooked by the opening chapters? Are there sections that lagged, or areas that were confusing?
- Overall Positives and Challenges: What aspects did I love about your work? Did characters or aspects fall flat?
- Reader Questions: What questions arose for me, as a reader? Are these the questions you want your future readers to be asking?
- Editorial Recommendations: This is where I my editor hat on to provide a professional recommendation of possible next steps for your manuscript
Comprehensive
$0.01/cents per word
Provided as a holistic report (typically 5-10 pages) that covers aspects such as:
- Readability: Was pacing consistent? Did I feel hooked by the opening chapters? Are there sections that lagged, or areas that were confusing?
- Overall Positives and Challenges: What aspects did I love about your work? Did characters or aspects fall flat?
- Reader Questions: What questions arose for me, as a reader? Are these the questions you want your future readers to be asking?
- Editorial Recommendations: This is where I my editor hat on to provide a professional recommendation of possible next steps for your manuscript
- Additional: In-line manuscript comments, reactions, and questions to complement and guide the beta reading report
Why Pay for Beta Reading?
Many authors can and do utilize volunteer beta readers from their writing community, family, and friends. If this option if available to you, with people you trust to give useful and non-biased feedback, I’d encourage you to take it!
However, relying solely on volunteer beta readers does come with pitfalls: you may not receive feedback from readers if they are unable to commit, or receive cryptic or less-than-useful feedback (such as “I loved it!” or, “I hated it” without any further explanation). Just like beta testing, the more opinions you can collect, the better equipped you are to evaluate your manuscript in terms of your next round of editing. Utilizing both paid and volunteer beta readers can be a great option to guarantee useful feedback, while still collecting a broad range of opinions.