Beta Readers are a test audience for your new material.
For example, in the movie The Break Up, Vince Vaughn’s character originally came out looking better than Jennifer Aniston’s character. That ending did not rate well with its test audience, so the ending was changed.
If The Break Up was a novel, the test audience would have been Beta Readers.
For my next novel, Sophomore Freak I’m following the advice of Allen D’Angelo of Archer Ellison, Inc. Here it is:
- Find 100 Beta Readers. How do you find them? Research your target market. (Mine’s a YA, so I want both YA and adults, which is 15-35. Adults read YA more than YA read YA). Then ask around — relatives, friends, friends of relatives. Cast a wide net, but not TOO wide. Nobody has an “audience of everybody.”
- Get them to rate every chapter you write between 1 (“hot rotting trash on a summer day with no breeze”) to 10 (“That chapter was so good, I just cheated on my husband/wife/significant other by reading it”).
- If it’s not at least an 8, ask them why. Were they confused? What needs to be improved?
- Revise and resubmit. By the time you get to a finished product, it should be UH-MA-ZING.
The ultimate goal is getting “pass along” value. “Pass along value” equals “People talking about you.” This is what you want. Try it along with me!
Hope this helps!