Metapost: Beta Readers Needed

Official announcement: I'm writing a book. Or, rather, I've written one, but it's not published yet because I'm going through a round of vigorous editing. To my eternal shame, it's not the best book in the world, but to my immense pleasure, I feel confident in saying that it's not the worst either. But I do want to get it to the "best I can make it" stage and what I need more than anything are some Beta Readers to tell me where they see holes so that I can fill them in and upload this baby to the online e-retailers. Thus I'm calling for volunteers, if there are any brave souls in the audience.

Beta Reader Event!

Start: October 15, 2011
End: October 30, 2011 (or later, if that's too soon. Let me know.)

I'm calling for 4-5 readers who will be willing to read a book that weighs in at ~60,000 words long. That's about 180 pages in Word, when you set everything to Calibri font size 10 with a page size of 5x7 inches. I'm hoping for a reading time of about 2 weeks, and there will be a questionnaire to fill out at the end if you're like me and enjoy "guided criticism". Or you can just write me and tell me what you think.

What I need is brutal and specific feedback of the lines of "I didn't like X, I would perhaps have preferred Y, for Z reasons." If you're afraid you can't provide that feedback candidly, I can set up an anonymous feedback system so I'll never know who said what, but really I'd prefer to just assure you that I'd like to hear about the warts now as opposed to after I publish and the reviews start coming in and it's too late to realistically change anything. I'm not going to stop liking anyone over this, and gods know you'll be doing me a huge favor by giving me feedback. *hugs*

What will you get for this prestigious Beta Reader gig? Unfortunately, not a lot: you'll get a free electronic review copy of the book, but since I intend to distribute the final book for free on the blog anyway, that won't be a huge dollar savings. But you will be mentioned by name in the Acknowledgments section at the back of the book that only 1% of readers actually read. And you'll have my undying gratitude, which could possibly translate into a signed electronic copy of the book, as soon as I figure out how to do that.

If you are willing to be an incredibly awesome and impossibly cool Beta Reader for me, please contact me by email with an address that I can reach you with, a name I can use in my acknowledgments section, and your preferred reading format -- epub, pdf, and Word are my poison of choice; mobi is something I'm going to have to work on eventually, but for the moment I'd probably provide a simple Calibre conversion and see how that goes.

But first! You'd probably like to know what the book is about. I would. Here's a Beta Cover and a Beta Write-Up superimposed over a pretend "Kindle Daily Deal" just to look super Beta Pretty. It's betalicious. (Click image to enlarge.)


Please feel free to use this thread as Beta Feedback on the cover and write-up. Much gratitude and thanks in advance to you all. :)

26 comments:

Nina said...

Ooh, ooh, Ana, pick me, pick me! I sent you an e-mail with a more measured response, but that's what my inner fangirl said when I read this post!

On topic, I like both the cover and the write up very much!

Ana Mardoll said...

Absolutely!! Sent you an email. ;)

Layne R said...

I would LOVE to read it and give feed back for you please? It sounds wonderful and the cover art is very nice.

chris the cynic said...

I'm kind of torn here. On the on hand I'd love to help and it's about time I read a book again and I'd like to read your writing. On the other hand I shy away from darker and edgier the way one with a bad immune system might shy away from the plague and, also, would someone who hasn't actually read a book in ages make a good beta reader anyway?

This probably requires more thought.

Ana Mardoll said...

Layne, absolutely. Send me an email and I'll get a copy sent out to you on the 15th. :)

Chris, you know I adore your viewpoint, but I don't want you to push yourself to help if you think it would be bad for you -- I'm going to pretty upfront say that the ending isn't happy, and I know that's legitimately hard for a lot of people. You only have so many spoons, you know? :/

If you really want to help, you can get my back on the next one -- I've got a lighter one planned out and I'll need readers for *that*. :)

jill heather said...

I would be interested in beta reading, especially in epub. Actually, I'd like to read in epub and comment (on the text itself) in doc. Because I have my oddly specific preferences.

Ana Mardoll said...

I'm all about oddly specific preferences! Send me an email and I'll add you. :)

(i should tell everyone my email is anamardoll@gmail.com or the red mail icon up at the top of the blog.)

Antigone10 said...

I'd like to do it. Go ahead an email it to floater_girl@yahoo.com and I'll bring the full force of my editing skill to force. (Which is a some hours in the college English room and one paid gig for a tech manual, but you never said we needed to have much experience).

Cupcakedoll said...

I'll volunteer to give it a try! You know my writing style, so pick me if you'd like me to give suggestions that steer your style in that direction. I've been told I rock at dialog, but I'm also a rather shallow reader and may not pick up on the hints and atmosphere you might be trying to convey. Also I have beta-read for a few thirteen year old fanficcers and I brutally rip apart every sentence while trying to help. Of course I'd have much less to rip apart in your book since you're, y'know, literate and not thirteen, but... warning: I may be mean.

Mime_Paradox said...

This sounds interesting, and I'd be happy do this. I've sent you an e-mail on the subject--look for Ian PĂ©rez.

Timothy (TRiG) said...

I can promise to be in the 1% of readers who always read the acknowledgements section. I'm afraid I'm very bad at reviewing writing (I've tried, on h2g2: I just can't do it), so I'll wait till the finished product is available.

TRiG.

chris the cynic said...

Hey, I never responded to this. Though my response is, I'm pretty sure, exactly what anyone reading would have predicted sot it might not be necessary.

I'll pass on this one but I look forward to your lighter one whenever it may come.

Marie Ljosenvoor said...

I can review it, if you still need more readers. That sounds awesome, and it would be great to be able to comment on the epub text itself (can you do that yet?).

Ana Mardoll said...

I'll pass on this one but I look forward to your lighter one whenever it may come.

Sweet. *grins* I'm happy to hear that. :)

Marie, I will definitely have an epub version. Send me an email and I'll add you to the list! :)

mmy said...

mmy waves excitedly and jumps nervously from one foot to the other while crying "me please, me."

hapax said...

Normally I would love to do this -- it's one of my off-the-clock jobs, after all -- but I'm not in a good place right now for "it ends badly" and I probably couldn't be fair.

Pity. I adore fairy tale retellings.

I hope that I'm in a stronger emotional place when the final version comes out. :-)

Ana Mardoll said...

I *fully* understand. You have to be in the right place for something that ends badly, which is why I wanted to be clear about that upfront. ;)

Kit Whitfield said...

I feel like I should apologise for not volunteering. Trouble is, I have a policy of not reading the fiction of people I don't know in real life (well, sometimes I do reports, but that's paid work); if I didn't, I'd be open to any stranger who'd read my stuff sending me their thousand-page opus and it'd make refusing to read it personal. People can get a bit odd about published writers and I try to minimise the ways it can go bad.

However, it looks like you're nicely covered for volunteers, so I'll just wish you the very best of luck. :-)

Ana Mardoll said...

I *fully* understand, and it's a good policy -- I've got about 500+ books in my Calibre "to-read" list and an associated guilt complex, but, you know, busy. Thank you so much for the well wishes -- I've been overwhelmed by how supportive everyone has been. :)

Will Wildman said...

I somehow missed this post going up last week. Ach. And based on my previous statements, I would generally be volunteering very hard right now, but the combination of other commitments and not being sure how I'd react to a downer story instead makes me think I'll hang back for the next one.

Ana Mardoll said...

I'm psyched at being so on the ball I have readers for the next book already. :D

Deoridhe Grimsdottir said...

I'm afraid I can't commit to the time to read and critique, but I'll definitely read it when it comes out! I love fantasy re-tellings, and Beauty and the Beast is only second to Little Furball for me in terms of Fairie tales which Explain my Psyche.

Charleen Merced said...

Hello Ana. If you still need readers, shoot me an email.

Ana Mardoll said...

Thank you, Charleen! I think I have about a dozen readers now, so it's up to you. :)

Ana Mardoll said...

VERY OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:
The Beta Reader email has gone out as of five minutes before this post. If you have not received it and would like to, send me an email and I'll forward it to you. Thank you!

Charleen Merced said...

Yep, send me the stuff!

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