6. My system to get the most out of beta readers

While busting the myth "Can beta-reader feedback ruin your art?"

May 22, 2024

∙ Paid

The last 4 years have been the golden years for me in terms of getting massive insights from beta reader feedback! But I know well that not everyone feels that way, and in the beginning, it’s not easy to see how to interpret beta reader feedback effectively. Hence this post:

I honestly believe that everyone benefits from having people read their book and offer feedback on it before publishing, even if you’re just writing for fun and/or self-publishing.

However, why do so many people have gut-wrenching, crash-and-burn experiences with asking for feedback?

Everyone dreams of sending their draft out to early readers and getting a list go glowing comments. Wouldn’t it be amazing to hear:

“This book is perfect. Don’t change a word of it.”

But there are a few problems with the initial assumptions that many people (including myself) have had when dealing with their first beta readers.

You aren’t ready for feedback yet if:

You don’t actually want to change anything about their book nor believe that it could be improved. You just want people to agree that it’s awesome. The way you can tell if this is you is when you instantly find yourself snapping back at anyone who gives you their thoughts about it. If you want to get into a fighting match with anyone who reads your work if they don’t “get it,” then don’t bother with feedback because …no amount of advice is going to help you as long as you have that mindset.
You don’t have a list of clear questions that you want readers to answer about your book. Asking people “so what did you think?” is never going to give you clear and actionable notes.
You have absolutely no idea what genre your book is in (this is the part where you’ve got to do more reading so that you know which types of book fans you should ask to read yours).

The myth that beta reader feedback is useless:

Due to a lot of assumptions like these that writers make, there is a surprisingly popular opinion circulating online that I’ve heard from several authors that:

I don’t want feedback from others because they will only tell me to change my book in ways that compromise my artistic vision, my original voice, and limit my expression and style when I am trying to present a NEW CREATION. Besides, their opinions are often conflicting at best, so it’s useless.

At the time of writing this, I’ve received feedback from 85+ people.

That’s why I can confidently say that this mythical belief about feedback is (most of the time) a defense mechanism. It’s a way of protecting your ego and your book from the perceived threat of public opinions before publishing. Now, I understand very well that you have a unique vision, and it’s important to you, and you absolutely should protect your dream and stand up for it.

But what if I told you that you can have your cake AND eat it too? You can protect your vision and dream, PLUS you can also get amazing feedback that makes your book a million times by unlocking your creativity in ways that you didn’t know you could?

Before I get into the system that I created for testing how compelling my books are as effectively as a coder tests every line of software programming, I highly recommend that you also also bookmark this handy guide from my book coaches

Rachel May

And

E.B. Golden

on the fundamentals of giving actionable feedback: