Better beta readers; grant-killing words; A-listers reply all: Newsletter 19 February 2025

Newsletter 82: How to manage beta readers, who’s licensing what to which AI, how not to blurb, plus three people to follow and three books to read.

Benefiting from beta

Software that’s finished enough to use, but not complete, is in the beta testing stage. And lately it’s been similarly fashionable for authors to recruit beta readers to get feedback on their unfinished manuscripts.

In my experience, authors often do this poorly. They get the wrong feedback from the wrong people in the wrong way, and act on it ineffectively. This is worse than useless; it actively distorts the book in ways that interfere with accomplishing the author’s goals.

What’s the objective of using beta readers? Here’s one way to think about it:

Beta readers stand in for the target audience and identify flaws in manuscripts that would make the book less effective.

Beta readers are not smart people to brainstorm ideas with. Brainstorming partners like that are suggesting and road-testing concepts at the start of the project. They’re not readers at all.

You can hire a writing coach to suggest ways to write more effectively. You can hire a developmental editor to read your whole manuscript and use their expertise to make it as effective as possible. Those are experts who know all about writing and writers, but not all about your topic. They’re not beta readers.

Sure, beta readers are often your friends and colleagues, because those are the people most likely to help you for free. But working for free is not the most important quality of those beta readers.

Beta readers must represent the target audience. If you’re writing for investors, your brother the nurse isn’t the best beta reader. If you’re writing for marketers, your best friend in the finance department isn’t, either. Suggestions from potential beta readers outside your target market will distort your perspective. (If everyone in your market knows what “SEO” means, and your beta reader doesn’t, then their suggestion to explain it better isn’t going to help you.)

Avoid using your spouse as a beta reader. They’re probably not in the target market, they bring a whole lot of history from your relationship, and there are many reasons they many not be able to be honest. Using your spouse as a beta reader can not just mess up your book, it can mess up your marriage.

You should present beta readers with as complete a manuscript as you can. You can deliver it in two or three chunks, and it’s fine if there are gaps here and there. But don’t deliver a random mess of bits of pieces. Feedback on those fragments will lack context. Worse yet, the readers will lose patience with you and you’ll wear out their usefulness.

Your beta readers will likely not have the patience to read multiple drafts. Even if they do, once they’ve read a draft, their minds become biased, and they’ll have trouble giving “first-read”-type feedback on subsequent updates. They’re not an endless resource, which is why it makes sense to get their feedback once, on a near-complete draft.

You should give beta readers specific instructions, something like this:

This book is intended to help [target audience] with [challenges]. Please identify any places where you became confused or felt the text was less effective than it could have been. Please provide feedback in [Microsoft Word Track Changes/Google Suggesting Mode] or send it to me in an email. Don’t spare my feelings: any place you think the text can be better, please let me know about it. I’m particularly interested in [identify places where you want specific feedback]. And don’t just comment on specific elements — I’d love your overall impressions as well. It would be most helpful if you can get me your feedback by [deadline].

What should you do once you receive the feedback? First, say thank you, and offer to get the beta reader a copy of the book once it’s done.

But remember, this is your book. Don’t let your beta readers hijack it. Your job is not to make the beta reader happy, and the beta reader is not your editor.

Instead, look at each challenge and problem the reader identifies and ask:

• Why did they have a problem? What’s missing or explained poorly?
• Should I fix this? It’s perfectly fine to decide that a comment doesn’t need to be addressed, or that addressing it will make things less clear for other readers.
• Should I take this suggestion? Even if the problem the beta reader identifies is real, their suggestion may not be the best way to solve the problem. Use your vision and creativity to figure out your own best solution to the problem they identified.
• Did anyone else have this problem? If several people pointed out the same issue, you can often learn a lot by triangulating around their collective responses. If only one did, perhaps it’s an issue peculiar to that reader that others are unlikely to notice.

In software development, beta users are called “beta testers” — because they test the software and identify problems. They’re not called beta developers, because it’s the developers’ job to fix the problems the testers find.

It’s the same with writing. Beta readers are testers. It’s great to get feedback before the manuscript is done. But they’re not the writer. You are. Your brilliance — and the book’s excellence — will shine based on how creatively you solve the problems they identify.

News for writers and other who think

Jeevan Sivasubramaniam gives a nice lesson in how not to do blurbs (book endorsement quotes). Most authors do this wrong, and he cleverly explains how and why.

Ezra Eeman has a nice summary slide of which media companies are doing licensing deals with each AI company. Of course, he has to update the slide about twice a week.

Eight independent publishers formed a collective to negotiate better rates on shared services like printing (Publisher’s Weekly, subscriber link). Publishing is now fragmented across many traditional imprints, indies, hybrid presses, self-publishing operations, and all sorts of other modalities, but they’re better off cooperating than competing on service costs.

Gizmodo published a list of the words that will get your National Science Foundation grant flagged and possibly banned, including activism, biases, equality, female, systemic, and victim. This is a perfect example of the how stupidity and efficiency together are destroying the most impressive scientific research in the world.

There’s a new book coming out about Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels. A-list people got invited to parties for it. And what followed was the most epic celebrity reply-all thread imaginable, featuring John Hamm, Tina Fey, Graydon Carter, Aaron Sorkin, Rosanne Cash, Jesse Eisenberg, and cast of hundreds.

Three people to follow

Des Hague , author and counterintuitive leadership thinker.

Ben Popken , writer, reporter, thinker, and all around creative word guy.

John Jantsch , “the Peter Drucker of Small Business Marketing tactics,” according to Seth Godin

Three books to read

Avoiding the News: Reluctant Audiences for Journalism by Ruth Palmer, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, and Benjamin Toff (Columbia University Press, 2023). Trenchant analysis of who stopped consuming journalism and why.

Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World by Mark Schaefer (Schaefer Marketing, 2025). Creativity stands out in a world drowning in AI slop.

Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve by Alison Fragale (Doubleday, 2024). How women in the workplace can get the credit they deserve, negotiate better, and navigate complex office politics.