For a writer you need someone to read your work well before publishing it to public venues. There is a tiered system, that while a bit confusing in the beginning has been shown to help keep an author on the right track.

Readers while still in editing give a host of positive growth opportunities for authors before the actual publishing is done. Though Beta is probably the best know type they are by no means the only reader a good manuscript is in need of.

An Alpha Readers is usually engaged while the original manuscript is being written or draft copies are being reworked. They are a sounding board for the writer to make sure they don’t have plot holes, story arc breaks, or glaring tense misuse.

Alpha reading is not copy editing. Though it can sometimes be used to bypass this editing stage if used with premium software. I personally have been using AutoCrit of late. Previously, I used Grammarly, which had been suggested by my first publisher, to have a better manuscript ready for the final polishing.

Think of your alpha readers as a select few who can see your story take shape in the live action. They help a writer to address issues before they make mountains out of molehills.

Alpha readers can range from free to a set rate by word count. While free sounds amazing, the price for professional alpha readers are usually tiered by gross word count for flat fees. Much cheaper than the by-the-hour or by-the-word cost of a copy editor.

Writing groups are a good example of free alpha reading support for a writer. Keep in mind that submission in most groups have a word limit, usually between 750-1500 (equivalent to 1-2 typed pages).

Even a novella, at around 80k words, would take a group setting four to five years of free alpha reading to finish. Not to mention the short-timed turn-around on evaluations can mean things get missed easily.

Beta Readers have been an open secret a lot longer than the Alpha. They are the first readers for what a writer believes is their final draft. Beta readers usually see a draft after it has already been typeset for publication. Meaning if your beta reader finds an error, it will probably be too resource consuming to fix.

So why should you have beta?

A beta reader is important for making sure the intended audience matches the actual story written. As writers we can believe the story we are telling will hit best with a certain audience. Only to find out by beta feedback that another would enjoy it better.

Marketing is something that can make or break a story. Not because a story is bad, but because who we think we are writing for may not be the reality. As storytellers, who we are writing for is sometimes a hit or miss.

An example of this would be designing your book cover to look like a horror, only to discover it reads like a romance to your beta readers. Or vice versa.

Don’t change your story to match your readers, that is the best way to quickly kill your story. Change your expectation of who will enjoy it.

Using the cover example. If your beat reader feedback gives us wordsmiths a heads up something as easy as changing the cover, can have reviews go from 1 star to 4/5 stars. Just by knowing what audience will love it.

^{Quick disclaimer:} _{Starkly Written is an affiliate of AutoCrit.}