This week, beta reader feedback has been rolling in for my Sicily novella. Exciting! Scary! There’s something delightfully terrifying about sending a book you’ve spent months working on to a handful of people and asking them to tell you everything that’s not working in it. But that’s what I do!
It is really stressful to send off a manuscript to a beta reader. They’re reading the book as an ordinary reader would, except they’re telling you directly what they do and don’t like about it. A thick skin and objective mindset are necessary!
As an author, I obviously want to send them the best book possible, but if they were to tell me “loved it, no notes!”…well, that’s not exactly helpful, either. As tough as open critique on a book can be, I need it to improve the book and my writing.
I’ll be real, beta reader feedback is tricky. Sometimes readers point out things I already suspected, which affirms my hunch that I need to change something. Sometimes I experiment with something in the manuscript and it just doesn’t land, so it’s good to know in advance and revise if I want to. Sometimes a reader points something out that is a very serious oversight! But feedback from readers can be contradictory, sometimes not suit my personal vision for the book, or possibly make a part of the story more complicated than it needs to be, too.
For me, I typically keep my pool of beta readers small—around 4 or 5 people. It’s enough for me to spot patterns in feedback, but not so many that I feel pulled in a dozen different directions. Then I like to organize all my beta reader feedback into a Google Sheet. Yup, I’m a spreadsheet girl!
It’s actually a spreadsheet that includes every phase of notes for the book, and beta reader feedback gets its own dedicated sheet. I organize notes based on a few different things, including location in the manuscript, type of feedback (character, pacing, prose, etc.), the priority—aka whether it is low, medium, or high priority—and who gave the feedback, so I know who to reach out to if I have questions or want further input. Then I add a column for how I plan to resolve each issue, along with a status so I can track my progress.
It’s not the most glamorous part of being an author, but I love having everything organized before I dive into revisions.
I’m currently in the process of organizing my beta reader feedback and making my game plan of how to implement notes. I find it’s nice to have a day or two in between reviewing feedback/entering into my spreadsheet and then actually doing anything about it. There will absolutely be some notes that are definitive To Dos, but some might take a bit more personal reflection first. That defensive reaction when someone is saying they see room for improvement is impossible to kick, and a little bit of time and space lets me approach my edits with a level head.
I think the hardest part sometimes is knowing which notes to implement and which ones I need to ignore. I really trust my beta readers, so I often err on the side of accepting their notes and making changes. But if I were to take every single note and opinion from them, the book risks becoming unfocused or losing some of the tight pacing. With the Sicily novella, I have one reader who wants a bit more description of what the female protagonist looks like. No one else mentioned it, so it’s clearly not something all my readers are clamoring for. But at the same time, it’s not a terribly hard thing to work in. Buuut…I also don’t want to over-describe her, since I want my readers to spend more time envisioning themselves as the main character.
You can see how even the simplest feedback requires my attention and care before I decide how to proceed! It’s a delicate balance.
Anyway, that’s what I’ll be up to the next few weeks! I am so looking forward to digging into the notes and bringing this story one step closer to being in your hands.
ps if you love romance book discussions like this where I go a bit more behind the scenes, share my thoughts, and even give book recs, you’ll probably feel at home with my newsletter.