Once your Beta Reader service job is complete and you’ve been sent your completed questionnaires, you’ll be asked to quickly rate each Beta Reader’s answers out of 5.  This is just a very simple star rating that you can do via the My Beta Readers link on your dashboard.

But how do you determine what star rating to give each reader?  On some level the star rating is subjective and thus when we evaluate readers for continued participation in our program we won’t use these ratings exclusively, but they are still a big help to us.  How you choose to rate the readers is ultimately up to you, but try to be fair about it. 

If needed, here are a few ideas of what we would suggest you use to determine the star ratings.

5 Stars – Gave paragraphs of thoughtful answers to most long answer questions. Answers were well thought out and I would probably want to use this reader again and/or recommend them to others.

4 Stars – Gave detailed answers to most questions but on others they could have given more thought. I might use this reader again and would probably still recommend them to others as their answers were still helpful.

3 Stars – Gave an average amount of feedback but most answers lacked enough detail and not all of it was necessarily that useful. Not sure if I would use this reader again or recommend them to others but it’s possible this just wasn’t their type of book so they may do better with other books.

2 Stars – Gave short answers lacking detail, some useful stuff but nothing to dig in to.  I wouldn’t want to use this beta reader again and wouldn’t recommend them to others.

1 Star – Gave short and/or useless answers. Didn’t seem to spend much time on this or give it much thought and would never want to use this reader again nor recommend anyone else to use them.

Note: Regardless of the ratings, if you believe one of your beta reader’s responses to your questionnaire were non-sensical, overly rude/mean-spirited, or you think that they aren’t taking their job as a reader seriously, please let us know via email (make sure to send us their Beta Reader ID).