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You have your complete manuscript in front of you. 

You’ve read it a thousand times, edited it until you can’t see straight, and now you feel like you’re ready to move on.

Will you query an agent? A publishing house? Or is self-publishing the right direction for your work? All of these are important questions but there’s another important step you must take: beta reading.

Beta reading is when you send out your manuscript to a select few people who will read it and give you honest feedback on your work. The benefits of having beta readings done on your manuscript are:

1. You get to hear feedback from different people! It’s crucial to hear how different audiences, or people in your target audience, reacted to your book. A good beta reader will tell you what they like and dislike, and often times they will say if they would buy the book if they found it in a store.
   
2. Beta readers (aka “betas”) tend to be other writers or avid readers (usually both), and, odds are, they will catch those stubborn grammar errors or weird sentences that you missed, and either go ahead and correct them or point them out for you to fix!
   
3. Betas may find inconsistencies in plot, character development, etc that you may have missed. This is great, because it gives you a chance to go back and fill them in!
   
4. It is not uncommon for betas to say what they wish they had seen more of in the manuscript. For example, in one of my manuscripts, a few of my betas said that they wanted to see more on the relationship between the sisters in my novel.  
   
5. Betas will be able to point out potentially harmful tropes/words/etc. that you may have in your manuscript. (An article that talks more about this is coming soon and I will link it when it is up.)

So, now you’ve heard some of the amazing benefits of beta readers and want to find some for your manuscript. Where do you begin?

There are a few options for finding beta readers, but they can most easily be narrowed down into three categories:

1. Friends and family
   • Pros: easy to find and get them to read your work, free, you know they won’t steal your work
   • Cons: might not give honest feedback, maybe you don’t want them reading your work, they might say that they will read your work but never actually get around to it, and no writing experience
     
2. Social media (namely through writing Twitter and Facebook groups)
   • Pros: usually writing and beta reading experience, (mostly) honest feedback, free
   • Cons: harder to find reliable people, may take a while to get feedback to you
     
3. Paid beta readers (Fiverr is a good website for finding paid betas)
   • Pros: honest feedback, reliable timeframe
   • Cons: cost money

Each method has its pros and cons, so it’s up to you to ultimately decide which one(s) is/are best for you. Whichever you choose, you send off your work and a few days or weeks later, you get your feedback. Here’s some important things to consider when reviewing your beta reader feedback:

• Don’t take it too personally. Seriously. There’s a chance your beta reader won’t like your work at all. That happens and it usually means that they just weren’t the right fit for your book. Most beta readers will have something that they didn’t like in your work. It’s just a fact of writing.
  
• Take suggesting with a grain of salt. (see above)
  
• When getting betas from other writers, remember that each writer has their own preferred writing style, and sometimes their comments and suggestions will reflect their style.
  
• Some beta readers are very detailed, some are not. I suggest you clarify how detailed/thorough your beta readers are in their reviews before they read your manuscript so that you know what to expect.

Overall, having your manuscript read by betas should be a net positive experience. From the beta reader’s feedback, you should feel like you have been given the opportunity to improve your work before moving on to the next step in your publishing journey.