Get Help Managing Beta Readers for Your Book

Beta readers used at the right time, with the right tools and questions can make your book so much better. But how do you track the feedback? How do you securely deliver your manuscript to your beta readers? Well, if you're wondering how to collect feedback from your beta readers, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad. I'm founder of a fabulous self publishing services company called Book Launchers. First, if you need to know what a beta reader is and what they do, you should either head to selfpublishandsucceed.com and grab a copy of my book. It's not there. First, if you need to know what a beta reader is and what they do, you should either head to selfpublishandsucceed.com and grab a copy of my book, self publish and succeed, or you should watch this video on beta readers right there. I'll link to it at the end. Essentially, beta readers are typically unpaid readers of your book that you collect feedback from in order to improve your manuscript. One of the issues with beta readers is the time it adds to your process. Like you have to give people weeks and weeks and weeks to read your book and then sometimes they still don't even finish. Another issue is giving your draft to people who, while highly unlikely to do so, could easily copy and distribute your book as their own. Of course, there's other issues as well, but enter StoryOrigin, a fabulous platform that will help you with all of these issues. It streamlines book marketing and reader engagement in a pretty author friendly way. And they do a lot of different things to help authors. Just look at their beautiful website to get some ideas of what they do. And make sure you're subscribed to this channel to get the latest and greatest videos on storyorigin and all the other tools that are just for you. Okay, so one of StoryOrigin's standout features is the ability to send beta review copies. But this isn't just about getting early reviews. It's about engaging with your readers and refining your book with their insights. And what I really like is their ability to do this chapter by chapter. You can set up your book on their site and then chapter by chapter, securely send your book out and get feedback from your reader. Now imagine being able to fine tune every chapter based on real reader feedback. Now personally, this sounds a little horrific to me, but there are times and for certain books, this is really, really useful. So let's say you're writing a really technical book like you're Patrick Chauvin. Writing this book on becoming a pilot and you want to make sure that everything is accurate and current, chapter by chapter. You can send this to experts and peers to provide input, or perhaps you're a physician wanting to make sure that your research or strategies or your recommendations are current and accurate. This is exactly what story origin allows you to do. You don't have to wait for your reader to finish the whole book. You, you can get specific feedback on specific parts and that is it. Or you can send it to them chapter by chapter and not overwhelm the reader. This tool allows you to control access, sort the feedback and track reader progress so you don't have to write them and say, hey, have you started reading yet? You can see they haven't. You can sort feedback across versions and readers. You can embed questionnaires between chapters, so at the end of each chapter you can ask for very specific input or which is oh so important because don't ever ask a beta reader what do you think? That's not valuable. You can also control access on a per reader basis so they can't share it with others. Readers can't see others feedback, so they won't be influenced by what others have said, which can happen if you use a Google Doc. You can have inline highlighting and commenting. The one thing that is really cool about beta reader feedback is that by distributing advanced copies chapter by chapter, you. You're not just collecting feedback, you're building a community of supporters. These are people who are invested in your book and because of that, they are much more likely to be instrumental and very supportive of your book success. And really they're doing that by providing you input even before its official launch. So how do you set this up? Well, let me just show you real quick. So head on over and log in. If you're on the free plan, you'll need to subscribe, which you can do for $10 a month. Once you're paid up, you can go ahead and start creating your beta copy. Then you will need to make sure your author profile is set up, because if it's not, this is what you will run into. So now that we have those details taken care of, let's check out this cool system here. Okay, so title author profile. But what I think is super cool is the opportunity to split it up chapter by chapter, by section, by episode or by scene. So I guess if you're writing scripts, this is what you could use to collect beta reader feedback on a script too. That's pretty cool. All right, then this section on application is likely where you're going to take applications from your community versus asking three specific people for help, which is probably what I would do. But if you had a community of people and you wanted specific people to apply, then they could use this tool. Then you just upload your file and then you can upload revised chapters. And that doesn't require communication to say, hey, I uploaded a new chapter. Please make sure you're reading the new chapter. Story Origin will automatically send an email to your beta readers with new chapters or versions that are uploaded, and then your reader can see at a glance if they've left feedback on the latest version. This article on StoryOrigin's website explains how the feedback will look and all the best practices so much better than I can. So check it out. It walks you through what it looks like when you get the feedback and best practices for choosing a beta reader as well. Now keep in mind, my own personal recommendation on best practice on working with a beta reader is to be really clear on what you need. I already said this, but it should never be hey, what do you think? But if you have a spot where you really want additional input, or there's, like I said, technical pieces that you want to make sure are accurate or understandable, beta readers can be really useful. And StoryOrigin has created an excellent tool for you to use to do it. In the description below, I've got a link to storyorigin, and right here is a video on beta readers that is worth a watch, as is this video on paid book review sites. All are worth checking out. So go ahead, I'm waiting.