Do you provide Beta Readers?

BetaBooks has been accepting users for 8 months now. At launch we knew we were going to help people overcome the organizational challenges of beta-ing a book, but almost immediately we discovered there was a different problem people wanted us to handle for them. They wanted help finding readers.

This caused me and Andrew some confusion. There are literally hundreds of places on the internet where readers are hanging out waiting to be asked to read something. In fact, every few weeks we hear about another special corner of the internet putting authors and readers together (shout out to https://ilovevampirenovels.com/).

So what's going on? Why are so many people coming to us, mere programmers and rather bad marketers, asking us to "give" them readers?

I thought, “Maybe people don’t know where to find readers? Maybe finding readers is hard,” so I wrote a long blog post about it.

I think it is a pretty good guide, but, honestly, it isn’t anything other people haven’t said. There are no secrets there, and tons of authors on the site found their readers in those very places.

So there aren't any secrets, and it isn't that hard. And I know it can't be that hard because Andrew found a couple dozen readers, and if you'd met that guy in real life you'd think no way ;)

For a little while I thought that maybe the people who wanted us to provide readers were lazy. Uncharitable of me, I know. I apologize. Honestly, what was I thinking! These are people who have completed at least one novel, if not multiple, so I know it isn't laziness.

As time has gone on, I've begun to think it's something else. Something more insidious, a problem that afflicts all artists. Here's what I think it is:

We creative types often doubt our own creation. We're not sure that what we've made is any good, and we're afraid. We're afraid that we will waste people’s time, that they won’t like what we have made, and that, by extension, they won't like us. So we don’t want to ask them to read our work, watch our play, see our improv, listen to our remix, come to our gallery show, watch our dance piece, see our band, etc.

I know how that feels.

I'm increasingly convinced that what many people want from BetaBooks, maybe without even knowing it, is for someone else to tell people to read their book because they afraid to ask themselves.

They'd like a 3rd party reference, a stamp of “this is good enough.” Some kind of credibility they feel that only an impartial third party can provide.

If you're a writer, and that's what you're looking for, I want you to stop and ask yourself why. You've done something awesome! You wrote a book! Be proud of that. Or you've written short stories, or a whole series of books, or an article, or whatever. Whatever it is, we want you to be proud of it.

More importantly, we want you to be a successful writer. For that to happen you have to ask people to read your work. You have to be brave enough, or diligent enough, or just plain motivated enough. And we aren’t going to do that part for you. Sorry.

So that's my working theory on why some writers think we'd do a better job finding their audience than they would. It might change again, but it feels a little stickier than my old ideas.

Now, this theory certainly doesn’t apply to everyone, but if you're one of the people who “just wants someone to give them readers” I would encourage you to take a moment of honest self-assessment and see if maybe your problem is that you are not being brave enough to ask.

If any of that rings true for you, then please take a deep breath, then start asking people to read your book.

You've done something great! Some folks are going to love it, some won't. Some are going to quit, and some are going to give you great feedback and help you make a better book. The very worst that can happen is no one will take you up on the request and your book will remain unread, but if you're not asking people to read your stuff, then that's where you're stuck already! So, go ask! Be brave! Be awesome!

You might just be surprised by the wonderful people you meet along the way, and maybe even find yourself wondering why you wanted someone else to do it all for you :)