I went to the post office this morning and mailed my completed manuscript to one of my two first "Beta-Readers." The term is lifted from Roz Morris' book Nail Your Novel: Draft, Finish & Fix with Confidence. Here's what my cover letter said (also lifting freely from Roz):
Thanks for reading the enclosed. If you find it’s too dull or awful to read, please stop and simply mark your place so I know how far you got.
I’d like you to make some annotations as you read, but not to edit for grammar or spelling – – unless it’s just so obvious and easy that you can’t resist. You don’t need to solve any problems for me – just point out where you were enjoying the book and where you weren’t.
You may want to use these marks:
zzz = boring
??? = hard to understand
Checkmark = you like this part
No! = stretches credibility
What I’m looking for is a gut check on whether this pile of paper is any fun to read.
Thank you for your time and willingness to suffer through this. I will also thank you for your very honest and frank opinion.
So, now I sit and wait. Or, perhaps catch up on some exercise that I've missed in the last few days as I wrote final scenes and ran Grammarly and AutoCrit. I blogged about that process elsewhere.
While I'm waiting, I've also got a pile of stuff to read about publishing. One option, of course, is to submit to She Writes Press. Another is to go totally indy. Your thoughts?
Karoline -
I sent paper copies at their request. Part of the manuscript had previously been through a developmental edit. That was done electronically with Word tracking changes. These readers won't be making changes or edits, just marginal comments as noted in the blog post.
Thanks for asking!
I'm curious as to why you didn't send them a Word document? It's so much easier to use "Track Changes" in Word then make comments on paper.
Thank you!
Thanks for sharing, Ann! I'm going to share this post in an upcoming newsletter to our community.