Changes coming for April's Beta Reader Pool

The next cutoff for Beta Reader Pool submissions is coming up in one week, on March 26, and I wanted to share some news with you guys ahead of the cutoff.

The reader pool has grown a lot over the last few months, and is now close to 200 readers. That's amazing to us, considering that not many months ago there weren't even two hundred people on the site!

Back in February we tried sending out two books because we just couldn't decide between the two finalists, and we weren't sure how the pool would respond, but I'm pleased to report that the pool divided fairly evenly between the books and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

In March we went back to one book, as expected, but something happened that surprised me: I got a bunch of emails from readers asking for more books again. After thinking this over, we've decided to move in the direction readers are asking.

We're going to try and pick multiple books from distinct genres for each reader pool going forward. How many we pick will depend on the quality of the submissions we receive, but will probably range between 3-5 books a month going forward.

I say we'll try to pick more books, because we still need to strike a balance. If we send out books that are too rough, readers won't enjoy it. If we send out too many, it just becomes noise, something people take for granted. I've heard loud and clear from our readers that they enjoy the beta reader pool because it's something to look forward too, and part of that is because it only comes around once a month.

The Beta Reader Pool doesn't ask readers for a lot of attention, so when it does pop up, it's kind of special. To that end, we're going to keep the reader pool limited to a monthly cycle. It's clear that this aspect of it works really well.

But, we are excited to share more quality books with our audience, and if you've got a book ready for readers I encourage you to submit it! For all the details on the event, and how to submit, please see our permanent Beta Reader Pool page. And, if you have any questions, please feel free to email us.

Cheers,

Andrew