The Pros and Cons of Beta Readers

I just finished an early draft of a new middle grade novel and realized as pressed “save” that even though it was nowhere near done, I’d taken it as far as I could.

It was officially time for a beta reader!! 

I’ve used beta readers for all of my books and I’m a huge fan of gathering outside feedback mid-project. I asked five authors who have books coming out this spring about their beta reader experiences. From kids’ books, to short stories, to spec lit, to literary fiction, writers Terri Favro, Kate Jenks Landry, Miranda Schreiber, and Teri Vlassopoulos, and Jean Marc Ah-Sen share their thoughts below. 

(And…not everyone is as big a fan of beta readers as I am!)

Who is your beta reader for your most recent work and why did you choose to work with them?

Terri Favro: I usually turn to other writers (especially of speculative fiction) and to non-writer friends and acquaintances who are avid, thoughtful readers. For the story I have in an upcoming anthology, Devouring Tomorrow, I turned to my husband Ron as my primary beta reader because he was familiar with the “landscape” of the story which is set on the bike trail along the Niagara River gorge, over the Rainbow bridge into Niagara Falls, New York.

For my upcoming alternate-history novel, The False Queen’s Archive, coming out late in 2025 from Brain Lag Books, my beta readers were mostly writers, including a group called the Cecil Street Irregulars who have been workshopping speculative fiction together since the mid-1980s. One beta reader for that book was a professional archivist. I asked them to read the book with an eye toward whether it worked as a fictitious archive.

Kate Jenks Landry: I almost always use multiple beta readers for each project, because different readers are helpful in different ways. Because I work on kids’ books, I always like to have kids read my work before I submit it. They give me explicit feedback, which is always so thoughtful and surprising, but I also watch them as the read, noticing if a particular sentence trips them up, or if their interest wains at a certain point. I make sure that all the jokes are landing. 

Miranda Schreiber: My best friend, brilliant Rachel Gerry who is associate editor at Brick Literary magazine helped me with developmental edits while I was writing and editing the first draft of the manuscript. She gave me line-by-line edits that helped me organize the structure and clarify aspects of the story that benefitted from more narrative direction. A better story just naturally emerged from this interaction and analysis which was special since it started out just in my head, in a very solitary place.

Why do you use beta readers?

Kate Jenks Landry: For so many reasons! I have so much trouble seeing my work objectively when I am in the middle of a project. I need someone who is not emotionally invested in the same way to tell me honestly what they think is working and what isn’t. 

Also, Picture books are oral texts as much they are visual. Part of what you are doing is writing a script that will be performed by parents, grandparent, teachers, etc. You want every adult that reads your book aloud to the kids in their lives to look like a rockstar. You have to make absolutely sure the text reads smoothly and well, no matter who is reading it. 

I love ambiguous writing that leaves gaps for the reader to enter, to wonder about, to grapple with. Particularly when writing picture books, you want to leave lots of space for the illustrator to make choices and play around. The danger with writing this way, however, is that you always risk leaving too much out. A beta reader can tell you when you have stripped things back too far, not giving enough detail or information to allow the reader to understand what is happening, or to connect with the character and the world of the story.

Beta readers aren’t for everyone. Author Jean Marc Ah-Sen is doesn’t often use them and I asked him why.

Jean Marc Ah-Sen: I think that too many outside influences can short-circuit my writing and take me out of the process, which for me is pretty insular to begin with. Another thing maybe worth mentioning is that I feel that my work has always been about having a very specific conversation with my influences, most of whom are dead, and not necessarily with a hypothetical reader. Editorial feedback is critical in any writer’s output of course, but I think that between my agents and the editors that I am working with, there are more than enough viewpoints to consider without bringing beta readers into the equation.   

How do beta readers change or shape your creative process?

Miranda Schreiber: I think I was always thinking of how the manuscript would read to two perspectives which were: the perspective of a writer who would be reading it stylistically and thinking about intertextual similarities or references, and then to someone who didn’t have familiarity with those topics who might just randomly pick up the book. Especially because it is addressed to a character who is a bit reluctant to listen, I was also thinking a lot about attention throughout. It felt like a big narrative concern was trying to call out and keep this character’s focus even though she is distracted, and in some ways very committed to that distraction. And I think Rachel helped me address both of these hypothetical readers.

Teri Vlassopoulos: Writing a book is such an internal, solitary process that at a point in time, as the author, you need to extricate yourself from it in order to proceed. Beta readers, coming in before editors, help me understand my work in its earliest form and help me with the next rewrite. 

How and when do you engage with a beta reader?

Teri Vlassopoulos: I have some beta readers within my writing group that I'll engage with throughout the process of writing a draft, following a workshop model. But I like to have a beta reader or two that don't have any preconceived notions of the work so I can get a sense of how the project comes together as a whole and will get the draft when it’s complete. 

What makes a good beta reader?

Terri Favro: A good beta reader is a simply a good reader. Someone who loves books and thinks about what they’re reading on a deeper level. If they’re not actually writers, they’re often members of a book club. They’re also someone with a generous spirit: beta reading, especially a novel, takes time. Some of my best beta readers have been visual artists– graphic designers, art directors, painters. That could be because I worked collaboratively with graphic designers and art directors over the years (as an advertising copywriter), so as creative partners, we were used to critiquing one another’s work. I’ve gone back to some of those partners to ask them to be beta readers, and found that they respond to the written word as if they’re “seeing” the story in their heads like a movie. That’s really useful. 

Teri Vlassopoulos: Someone who asks questions and can take a step back and not get bogged down in the details of the first draft. I expect a beta reader to see beyond the small details to provide feedback on the project as a whole, whether it’s identifying plot holes or structural advice. I think this is the key difference between a beta reader and an editor is that a beta reader focuses on questions, not the answers.

Jean March Ah-Sen: Betas can be helpful in showing you where your writing might get too obscure or indiscernible, where character motivations get hazy, or where your narrative momentum sags like a bag of wet dirt. They’re less helpful I find when they bring their own aesthetic judgment to the table, which we all are prone to doing as readers. But I think that sometimes one’s personal tastes don't have any bearing at all on a text. I think about how a lay reader and a formalist experience texts very differently. The formalist reads trying to gain appreciation and understanding of how a text is operating, but a lay reader sometimes employs a Goldilocks-style approach where they can only understand literature in terms of their personal preferences or political sensibilities. I think reading books can and should go beyond reader satisfaction and beyond seeing yourself mirrored in a text. 

Do you like being a beta reader for others?

Miranda Schreiber: I do; I think writing is a skill and a craft but also just a natural human activity that a lot of people intuitively partake in as part of being alive, as part of being emotional and documenting life. I always like reading other people’s work when they are open to letting me read it, whether from the perspective of a writer or as a friend, or both.

Terri Favro: Absolutely. It’s a big ask for one writer to spend ten or so hours reading someone else’s work, so I’m happy to return the favour. I find reading other writers’ work-in-progress can be inspirational, especially when I see what questions they’re struggling with, whether it’s a story arc, or the structure of the book, or something more general. We’re all grappling with similar challenges.

Kate Jenks Landry: I do! It’s also so easy to compare my own (crappy) first drafts to finished books at the bookstore and despair. Being a beta reader has helped me to realize that every book starts out as an imperfect mess, and that it takes everyone a ton of work and time and help to transform an idea into a finished book. 

Jean Marc Ah-Sen: I love a peek under the hood. I get energized by my friends’ projects that are in development. The present moment is always shifting too and a sense of what subjects are on writers minds or what they feel compelled to respond to is worth knowing about I feel—even if it's selfishly to get a sense of what to avoid in your own work.

What is some of the most helpful feedback you’ve received from a beta reader?

Kate Jenks Landry: Some of the most helpful notes have been one’s I disagree with. It’s not uncommon for me to feel defensive when I first read someone’s criticism, so I try to sit with feedback before I respond. Usually, I will begrudgingly come realize that the reader was right, but every now and then I will decide I really don’t agree with someone’s feedback, and this brings me a greater sense of clarity and conviction about a particular choice I’ve made. 

Are there certain projects you’re working on that would be more suited for beta readers? 

Jean March Ah-Sen: I don’t consider myself a writer with a populist sensibility, but if I ever endeavoured to write a “crowd-pleaser,” I think I might avail myself of beta readers as a resource. When certain modes of realism inform a work—whether character decisions are credible by a certain standard of action, whether cathartic release or some kind of moral judgement is expected at the book’s conclusion—then I think it makes sense to adopt an approach that makes concessions to an idea of “consensus reality.” But I think I’ve talked myself out of ever attempting something like that just by enumerating what such a project might entail…

Additional thoughts:

Terri Favro: It’s important to let the beta reader know what you expect from them. I like to tell mine that I’m interested in broad, over-arching feedback and emotional reactions – were they bored, were they lost, were they confused, were there parts they particular liked or disliked. They should never approach a beta-read as an editing exercise. I usually discourage beta readers from suggesting how to fix a problem in the narrative, although given that I’ve resurrected one character after death, and killed off another, based on beta readers’ suggestions, sometimes it’s good to just let the feedback flow!

Teri Vlassopoulos: I have not provided monetary compensation for beta reading in the past nor do I expect it from the writers that I provide beta reading for. However, while applying for grants, I’ve been including in the budget a spot for compensation of their time to acknowledge the work involved and how important it is. 

Note: Here’s some more info about including beta readers in your grants: Support Material, Budgets.

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Jean Marc Ah-Sen is the author of Grand Menteur, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation, and Kilworthy Tanner. His writing has appeared in Maclean's, The Globe and Mail, Literary Hub, Hazlitt, and the Toronto Star. The National Post hailed his work as "an inventive escape from the conventional." Dead Writers, a collaborative book with Naben Ruthnum, Michael LaPointe, and Cassidy McFadzean published by Invisible Publishing is out March 18, 2025.

Terri Favro is the author of four novels, including The Sisters Sputnik (2022, ECW) and Sputnik’s Children (2017, ECW), a Globe & Mail 100 Book longlisted for CBC Canada Reads. She is also the author of Generation Robot: A Century of Science Fiction, Fact, and Speculation (Skyhorse, 2018, revised 2020) and co-creator with Ron Edding of the true-crime graphic novel, Cold City (Coxwell Station Comics). Terri’s essays and short fiction have been published in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, including Devouring Tomorrow (2025, Dundurn). Her alternate history novel of the War of 1812, The False Queen’s Archive, will be out in late 2025 from Brain Lag Books. 

Kate Jenks Landry is a graduate of the MA in Creative Writing program at the University of Toronto. Her debut picture book, Beatrice and Barb, illustrated by Vivian Mineker, was published by Kids Can Press in 2023. Her second book, A Summer without Anna, illustrated by Risa Hugo, will be published by Kids Can Press on June 3, 2025.

Miranda Schreiber is a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared in places like The Globe and Mail, BBC, The Toronto Star, The Walrus, and The National Post. Iris and the Dead is her first book and will be published by Book*hug Press on June 10, 2025.

Teri Vlassopoulos is the author of Escape Plans (Invisible Publishing, 2015) and Bats or Swallows (Invisible Publishing, 2010). Her fiction and non-fiction has been published in Room Magazine, Catapult, The Millions, The Rumpus, The Toast, Open Book and more. She has been nominated for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. In addition to writing, Teri sits on the Board of Directors of the FOLD (the Festival of Literary Diversity). Her novel Living Expenses is out with Invisible Publishing on May 13, 2025.