When they first join the program, Beta Readers are asked to fill out a brief survey about their general background and interests.  This information is used in cases where the author requests that potential Beta Readers meet specific criteria or fall into specific demographics, since their book may be targeted to a specific group.  For instance, if they are writing a Young Adult book, they may want to restrict their book from being offered to Beta Readers over a certain age since the book isn’t targeted to them.  Or a romance author might decide that they only want to get a female point of view from their Beta Readers, so may not want it sent to men. 

So while most of those survey questions are not mandatory for the Beta Reader to fill out, it does mean that if the Beta Reader does not fill out a specific survey question and an author wants to use that info to restrict his audience, that Beta Reader will be restricted automatically since we won’t know whether they fit the criteria or not.

Readers can update their info via their Beta Reader Dashboard at any time, and if new questions are added they will be automatically directed there when they next log in.

Restricting readers by any criteria is optional to the author, and many won’t restrict at all because their books are written for anyone, and the more they restrict the smaller the pool of potential readers – but the option exists for those that want to use it.

Even if they do not restrict their potential readers, though, Hidden Gems may provide the author with some of the general survey info collected from their group of beta readers for the purposes of context.  However, none of this info will be tied to any personally identifying information about any reviewer. Authors are never given Beta Reader names, email addresses, etc.  It just may be helpful for an author to know that 80% of the questionnaires were filled out by females, for example.