Beta-Readers

One of the three novels I am self-publishing this year is Consenting Adults Only (CAO).  CAO at this point comes to 76,000 words, a respectable size for a novel.  I have completed a draft of CAO a dozen times, but since the first ‘completion’ I always seem to find something more that needs changing or improving. This is in part due to beta-readers of the work.

Before I turned to fiction, I didn’t even know what a beta-reader is.  Now I know.  A beta reader is someone who reads your work for style, story flow, and anything else that catches their fancy.  A beta reader is NOT an editor or copyreader.  Editors and copyreaders are generally professionals who are paid by the word. A beta reader can be anyone who enjoys reading – a friend, relative, or total unknown you found on the internet - and they may charge nothing (if family or friends) or a nominal amount, e.g., $100-$200, rarely more. 

Click on Wikipedia for concise definition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_reader

There are many beta-readers out there willing to read your manuscript and make comments to improve it.  I have found beta-readers among friends and relatives, and also through the web site Goodreads, which has a beta-reading discussion group.

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/50920-beta-reader-group

 If you google “beta-readers” you will find numerous web sites offering this service.  This is a nice web site titled “What makes a good beta reader?”

http://www.smallbluedog.com/what-makes-a-good-beta-reader.html

One piece of good advice is to choose someone who is interested in your story or subject.  Don’t choose a “Young Adult genre” beta-reader for a story dealing with explicit sex and mayhem.  For my novel Out of Time:  An alternative outcome to the Civil War, one of my beta readers presented himself as an amateur historian, and he was most helpful in his remarks about the story’s Civil War history.  So some vetting of your chosen beta-reader for their interests is a good idea. 

Understand there is NO standard for beta-reading, and the beta-reader may even ask, “What do you want me to look for?”  If they find typos or grammatical errors that’s a plus, but again, they are not editors and editing is not their task.

I have had three beta-readers for Consenting Adults Only (CAO), and each has been extremely helpful.  When you engage a beta-reader, always keep in mind that they only make suggestions; the novel is still yours and you should not make a change that doesn’t seem right to you.  I agreed with about 75% of my beta-readers’ suggestions and made suitable revisions, in some cases minor and in others substantial.  The other quarter of suggestions I more or less ignored or disagreed with.

The first beta-reader for CAO was my wife, a psychiatrist.  She made several suggestions about the two main characters, who have some significant psychological problems.  I needed to better explain why they act way they do.  I agreed, and so added some scenes and descriptive text based on her insights.  (No surprise:  I dedicate the novel to her.)

My next beta reader was an Emergency Department (ED) nurse whom I found on Goodreads (see link above).  My novel’s protagonist is an ED doctor, so this was a perfect fit.  She found a host of concerns, including some things I wrote that don’t ring true in the ED.  This led to more revisions.    

Then I sought out a beta-read from a friend who is both a retired attorney and a successful author.  CAO also has medico-legal sections in it, so her comments in this regard were very helpful.  In addition she found numerous typos that I (and others) had missed, and a couple of glaring factual errors.  Wow!  How did I (and previous beta-readers) miss those?  But we did.   That’s why you need a good copy editor.  (Repeat with me:  A beta-reader is not a copy editor.)

The most emphatic recommendation of this last beta reader (using her hat as a writer) was to get rid of the prologue.  Prologues in fiction are iffy, and there is quite a bit of back and forth in writing circles on if/when to use them.  Some readers simply ignore them.  Others find them distracting and just want to get on with Chapter 1. See the following web sites, which are short and to the point about prologues.

http://theeditorsblog.net/2011/07/06/pros-and-cons-of-prologue/

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and-quandaries/formatting/when-to-use-a-prologue

http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/prologue.shtml

I loved my prologue, and she admitted it was well-written, but just not appropriate for the novel.  I am also reminded of Stephen King’s admonition to “kill your darlings” if they don’t advance the story (see his memoir On Writing).  She said my prologue didn’t.  In the end, I (reluctantly) had to agree with her.  It was all backstory, about the protagonist as a youth.  She was adamant the book should begin with Chapter 1, not with a 10-page backstory, no matter how good the writing.  So I axed the prologue and dispersed the backstory throughout the novel.  I lost my “darling” but have a much better novel as result. 

A lot of self-published authors won’t spend the $1000+ to hire a professional editor.  But no book should be published without being first reviewed by one or more beta readers.  Beta-reading is much less expensive, and while not a substitute for professional editing, can be invaluable to your book’s success.