You may have heard of something being referred to in “beta” before. For instance, sometimes an early release of software is referred to as a “beta” release and the programmers look for people to test that software to look for bugs, referring to those people as “beta testers”.

The idea of a beta reader is very similar. In this case though, instead of software we’re talking about a book, and instead of a programmer we’re talking about an author.

After finishing a book, an author often wants to get some honest feedback on it to determine if the story is hitting its mark, or if there are potential issues that can be fixed before publication.

To do this, they give the manuscript to beta readers that are willing to read this unpublished draft and provide feedback from a reader’s point of view. Beta readers aren’t editors – they aren’t looking for typos or grammatical errors – but instead they’re giving feedback on aspects of the story, scenes or characters and whether they work well or not. They might tell you whether things were slow or well paced, which characters were their favorites or those they hated and why, or even whether you created a realistic world for them to live in.