Beta Readers - Pt 1 | Why have betas? What do they do? How do you find them?

hi guys my name is Bethany at asada and I'm the author of Evelyn's number today we're gonna talk about beta readers this topic is so important to me and I tend to get super detailed so I've broken it up into three different parts today we're gonna talk about why you need beta readers what you can expect from them how to find them and how to form your group the second video will be all about how to work with your beta readers once you have them in my particular process and the final third video will be

all about what do you do with their feedback once you have it so let's start with the first question number one what is a beta reader long story short it's just someone who is reading your book before it's published it's just a right early way of saying that you're forming a test group as in you're testing your book on an actual audience the only requirement for your beta readers is that they are readers that's it you're trying to figure out real-life reactions to your book so they should be people in your target audience but they

should also be people who wouldn't necessarily be the first to pick up your book because you want those people to read your book to write the main character in my book evelin's number is a teenage girl so I definitely wanted to have teenage girls as beta readers but I actually had a wide range of Ages and both men and women reading because they came into it with so many different backgrounds they all caught completely different things one other qualification to consider is if they actually like your genre because if they don't that's gonna color all

their feedback number two why do I need beta readers I can give you three good reasons first writing is subjective everyone's gonna have different opinions but beta readers can help you find where people agree and give you a general idea of how your readers will react a large group of beta readers can help you figure out if things actually need to be changed or if it's just one person's opinion second they are fresh eyes on your story I can't tell you how many plot holes my beta readers found and I just burst out laughing like

how did I miss that you get so close to your story all those hours of writing and editing taking things out adding them and taking them out again that you forget what actually made it out of your head and onto the page and third beta readers will save you a lot of money on develop mental edits later beta readers are free you could pay an editor to tell you that the middle drags and chapter whatever probably should just be removed or you could let your beta readers tell you that for free they are definitely not

taking the place of your editor but they are bumping your writing up so many levels and you won't have to pay for those more comprehensive edits okay number three how do I get beta readers like seriously how like where are they that's how I felt when I started looking for beta readers I was so so lost it's actually a lot easier than you think like I said earlier a beta reader can be anyone so the best place to start is actually with the people you already know use your social media your Facebook your Twitter your

Instagram if you have a blog you can use that to ask for beta readers you can also ask your family and close friends who like reading don't forget it is important that they actually like reading you don't want a beta who says your book is boring because they think all books are boring that's not helpful friends and family who can be honest with you make great beta readers but it's also good to have some people you don't know as well or even stranger after reaching out to your friend groups you can also try the Facebook

beta reader groups you can also join Goodreads where they have a bunch of different forums specifically for beta readers you could even Google beta readers and find people who are advertising although I would say stay clear of people who are trying to get you to pay for it because you can find people for free but before you start asking let's talk about number four how do I ask for beta readers the number one rule here is to be very very very very very clear say that somebody thinks they're signing up for a short story and

then you send them a Lord of the Rings trilogy size book what are they gonna do they're gonna drop out say you reference a romance in your story and all the girls are like boo sign me up and then it turns out that everyone dies what not only will they drop out but they're gonna be pissed so be clear here's a list of things that I've found are extremely important to be a friend about your genre your word count or size of the book since word count doesn't mean a lot to most people you can

also use another book as a comparison Evelyn's number is about the size of the Hunger Games your time frame when do you want to start and how long are you expecting it to go your deadline when do you need it back bye and do you need it back in pieces or as a whole which leads to the next one how will you be sending it in pieces or as a whole your expectations what are you expecting your beta readers to do do you want them to proofread or are you one of them for grammar or

are you in the developmental stage and you do not want grammar at all you want them to read through and then give their feedback at the end typically when we talk betas we are talking about enlisting them for the developmental read through finally and probably most importantly include a sample of your story usually this is just the first one to two chapters this is yet another failsafe to weed out people who might just drop out on you later if they don't like your style it can also be the deciding factor for a lot of people

who want to sign up but they're not quite sure what they're signing up for and getting that little glimpse of your story will help them decide since you're typically posting online and it's difficult to put up a word document or piece of Scrivener online I'd actually recommend using Google Docs I've never used Google Docs before or since but I found that it was very easy for me personally to put the first two chapters into a Google Doc and then include the link on my social media let's talk about a fear that people have really quick

about someone stealing your work in the u.s. if you write something it is immediately copyrighted is yours you can definitely look up some copyright guidelines and also include that information in your request so it's very clear but honestly very few people would do that and if anyone did they're only getting the first two chapters they're not getting your whole book if you're really stressed about it you could even put the copyright information in the Google Docs before your story begins do what you need to do to feel comfortable but get past that fear because you

need beta readers so let's say for example that I'm requesting beta readers for pearls number I would post something like this here's an example of my first beta reader request for Evelyn's number back in 2017 I ended up with a group of about 35 readers which was crazy and a little bit overwhelming but you can see here the things that I managed to do right the first time I also did technically have a beta reader group at the end for proofreading but I only asked for people to do that here is the request that I

put out in 2018 for pearls number this time I used Instagram because I've gotten to know a ton of awesome people there and it's also become my main author platform I learned to be a lot more specific about what I need as you can see and you'll notice that I did not include any chapters this time around since people should have a good idea of my writing style at this point from the first book in the series Evelyn's number okay let's talk about the final question which is the trickiest because it's pretty subjective number five

how many beta readers do I actually need the short answer is it's up to you you could do groups as small as four or five or as big as say thirty people I probably wouldn't go past thirty speaking from experience that was pretty intense you could do the beta process once or you could do it as many times as you want although I would recommend that if you do it multiple times you use different beta readers each time it's hard for people to be impartial after they've read it already so let's talk about a few

things that might influence your decision on how many beta readers you think you should have first people tend to drop out because of this I always recommend to have about 2 to 5 people more than you actually want to have even if you're super clear some people might still not quite realize what they signed up for they might realize they didn't have as much time as they thought or if you're like me and your first time asking what wasn't quite as clear as it should have been you might get people who drop out because oh

they actually did want to do grammar edit and that's not what you're looking for whatever the case may be expect that you might lose a few beta readers and that's totally normal it's okay just let them go another thing to consider is that not everyone's feedback will be helpful unfortunately for example say you have 5 beta readers but only 2 of them are actually giving you detailed feedback the third one is just not answering you on time not really sure if they're gonna keep up the fourth one just answers it's all right to every question

and the fifth is incommunicado you can't reach them at all now you technically have five still they didn't drop out but you're really down to two and that's not a large enough test group you really need a good test size to get a true feel for what your general audience would think which leads to the third thing I would consider test work better on larger groups of people if your goal is to have a test audience and it should be then the larger the better right logically the more people you add the more sure you

can be that when there is a general consensus that's the majority of what your readers are going to think in the same way the more people there are the more freedom you will have to look at an outliers opinion and say to yourself okay no they feel that way but these other twenty people don't so I think it's okay and that leads to the fourth thing to consider which is be very careful of opinion overload too many people's opinions can be very overwhelming and can paralyze you if there's just too many voices going on and

you don't know what a listen to which is why at least for me I'd say I probably would never want to go past like 25ish my personal favorite beta reader number is about 10 to 20 if I'm aiming for 15 I might ask 20 to 25 people I'm going to add number six which is a question I've gotten a few times now and realized it should be part of this video the question is this when do I ask for beta readers how do I know when my story is ready my answer to that is when

it is as done as possible because there's no point in asking someone else to do something you could do yourself if you see places to fix then fix them before you send it to your betas otherwise they're just going to tell you what you already know that is a huge waste of your time and theirs not to mention betas really appreciate if they don't have to struggle through a non polish story it doesn't have to be perfect at some point you do have to just let it go and get someone else's opinion but the more

fixed up the better Wow I told you guys this would be deed and we still have two more videos make sure to subscribe and ring that bell below so that you can be notified when the next video comes out on how to work with your banner readers and my personal process as well as what the heck do you do with your beta's feedback once you have it if you like this video make sure to give it a thumbs up and if you think of more places that you can find beta readers or anything I forgot

about the initial process make sure to leave a comment below thanks for watching guys and I'll talk to you again soon bye