Want to become a Beta Reader?

Whenever I write a book, before I publish it (and sometimes even before I send it to my editor) I send it to my Beta Readers.

Beta Readers are incredibly important to my books. They function as extra sets of eyes, catching everything from errant typos or character name mixups to pointing out plot holes or the fact that a particular weapon might not operate how I described. Beta Readers are gatekeepers, helping ensure that everything I put out is of the highest possible quality.

If you’d like to become a Beta Reader, I’d love to have you join. There are some details I want to share with you first, though.

What you do as a Beta Reader depends on your strengths. Some of the folks who help me out look for grammar/typo issues. Others look for story issues and make sure that the story is consistent from book to book as well as pointing out any scene issues. A couple of folks are former military and they help catch any mistakes I make there. Others let me know about the tone of the overall book and whether or not it fits in with the others in the series.

One of the most important things about being a Beta Reader is being able to read through a book fairly quickly. When I finish a book I will generally send it to my editor and to the beta team at the same time. I then wait for 4-5 days for my editor and for the Beta Readers to read through it and leave comments/corrections then I take everything and make all the changes at once before I upload the final file to Amazon.

This also means that I’m looking for people who will actually leave feedback. No feedback, or just saying “This was good” is pretty unhelpful for this sort of thing, so I’m specifically looking for folks who can give targeted, helpful feedback, regardless of whether it’s positive, negative or neutral.

As long as you’re comfortable with being able to read through and leave comments within a few days of when I send out the “hey a new book is available” email then you’ll do great.

If watching the inner workings of a book being put together and helping to make it all that much better (not to mention getting to read new books months before they come out on Amazon) sounds like a fun thing to you, send me an email at mi**@************ks.com (make your email subject line “Beta Reader Question” without quotes so that I know you’ve read through all this information above) and let me know that you’re interested. Tell me a little bit about yourself and your background, and if you sound like you’ll be a good fit (which, let’s be honest, if you’ve read this far then you probably are) I’ll get you set up and ready to rock and roll. 🙂

All the best,
Mike