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This is How You Use Beta Readers to Make a Great Book

Beta Readers are neither paid professionals nor kindhearted friends. Rather, they are actual, honest-to-God readers who want what you're creating so badly that they're willing to endure an early, awkward, broken manuscript just to get it.

-Write Useful Books

This already hints at how to go about finding beta readers. It's not your friends doing you a favor. It's people who have the burning problem your manuscript is solving.

If nobody cares enough to dive into the early version, then it sounds like the book is not yet sufficiently desirable. Return to Scoping and Reader Conversations until you find a Promise that people really want.

THREE TYPES OF INSIGHT BETA READERS CAN GIVE YOU

  1. What they say in their comments (qualitative insight).
  2. Where in the manuscript they become bored, start skimming, stop reading, and stop leaving comments (quantitative insight).
  3. How they apply the book’s ideas in their life (observational insight)

BETA READING IS ITERATIVE, EXPLORATORY, AND TOUGH TO DEADLINE

In my experience, Beta Reading runs in iterations of 2-8 weeks: the first week is used to gather the bulk of the feedback and the remainder to work it into a new revision. (The earlier iterations are typically fastest since the manuscript is easier to rearrange while it’s still at its roughest.)

Early on, readers will run into a major problem that essentially prevents them from continuing (usually either massive confusion or boredom). For example, in the first round of Beta Reading for The Workshop Survival Guide, not a single person made it through even the second chapter. As we edited, rewrote, and refined it over the subsequent months (adding new Beta Readers at each step), we could see folks progressing further and further until nearly everyone was reaching the end and receiving value.

book

Source: https://kommunikato.de/2020/10/the-workshop-survival-guide/

If you absolutely must put a timeline on this stage of the process, allow yourself to run at least two full iterations of Beta Reading, and ideally three or four.

But in a perfect world, you would continue iterating and improving until your Beta Readers show you that the manuscript is ready.

TWO CATEGORIES FOR BETA READING

It's helpful to divide beta reading in two buckets,

  1. Make your book more EFFECTIVE. (Does it work for the readers?)
  2. Make it more ENGAGING. (Does it have a great Reader Experience?)

By the end of your beta reading your book should be Desireable, Effective, and Engaging.

With that, you're ready to advance to the final task of Polishing it.

One last thing before we wrap up,

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU'RE DONE WITH THE BETA READING PHASE?

You can start working on Polishing the book if and only if,

  1. Recruiting new Beta Readers feels easy since they want what you’re offering (Desirable)
  2. Most of them are receiving the value and getting to the end (Effective and Engaging)
  3. At least some of them are bringing their friends (Recommendation Loop)

Do not Polish your book before that. Otherwise, all that time and energy will go to waste.


Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it. If you did, you can check out Write Useful Books

  1. 1

    Is it a problem if early versions are later leaked?

    1. 1

      No, you should be so lucky! Think of it as content marketing. It's a sign that there's significant demand.

      In reality, it's unlikely to be an issue.. But you should hope your book does so well, it becomes an issue!

      1. 1

        I think the main downside is internal: it might take the wind out of your sales for the "tah dah" you're striving for

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