McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Beta Readers for Novel-length work
J_M:
Reading back over this, you may want to be careful as to how far you reference other authors' characters and worlds. A casual reference like mentioned in the paragraph above would probably be fine, but if you start referencing either actual events or using that world to spin off your own book(s), that could be considered a breach of copyright (as well as from a reader's perspective, cause continuity/magic mechanics problems.) If you're talking about fanfic, again, that's one thing. If you're intending in any way to make money off of it though, may want to clear any references through JB and any other authors who you're referencing, just to keep yourself out of trouble.
drza:
--- Quote from: Kali on April 02, 2010, 05:45:06 PM ---Woot! Thanks for all the replies. I'll come crawling when I'm closer to the end of this, probably about the time I've "finished" and am ready to give it a once-over myself. Then after I've gone through it and fixed the little things that bother me, I'll start sending it out in pieces. We'll see how I divvy it up when I see how long it is. Number of pages, or a few chapters at a time or something, probably.
Back to the salt mines! Time to write the scene of yet another of Rachel's phenomenal screw-ups in which she learns why legends talk about silver bullets but almost never enchanted baseball bats.
--- End quote ---
I can't make any promises (my schedule tends to be crazy), but if you're still looking when you're finished I might be able to help you out. I will hopefully be finishing up my own sometime in the near future, so I could very well be looking for Beta readers myself in the near future. Seems like it'd be good karma for me to volunteer, so let me know.
Kali:
RISE FROM THE DEAD!!
I'm resurrecting this post 'cause I want to give people who responded before a little reminder that they did, in fact, respond before. And to open the door to anyone else. Check the first post for what I'm looking for in beta readers, and let me know if you want to read! It is right now 82,632 words long, according to MS Word, and is broken up into two unevenly sized documents because Word started freaking out when the first one got too long. There *are* a few empty space breaks, but I have NOT put chapters in yet. That'll probably be done after betaing, when I'm sure I'm done all the editing and can make the breaks appropriately.
I have no idea how long authors generally give beta readers to get through something this length. Naturally I don't want to wait forever. If nothing else, I do NOT want to be sending my query to agents anytime near Christmas.
I will say that this is done now. 100% done, as long as I can keep my fidgety little fingers out of it. What I might do, what I'm thinking about doing, is making a questionnaire of sorts to send to people. What I'm thinking is you'd read it, send me your comments, and then I'd send you the questions I want specific feedback on. And it would be very specific. Things like, "Did ____ plot point seem contrived, or did it the explanations given satisfy you?" or "Did the conversation where _____ happened work, or was it too much an "As you know, Bob" scene?"
<evilWillow>Questions? Comments?</evilWillow>
Edit to add: After a comment (thanks Meg), I thought I'd say I'm willing to send you a hard copy if you'd rather have that than an electronic copy. And I'm not looking for more than 5 or 6 people. Of course the more opinions the better, but the more people who have it the longer it's going to take and... Ok, I suck, I'm impatient.
۞†Grey Warden†۞:
I'll help if you don't mind honest brutality or unswerving fandom i can go either way depending on the book and story PM me the basics and ill help.
Enjorous:
I'll throw my hat into the ring as well.
And when you say
--- Quote ---If nothing else, I do NOT want to be sending my query to agents anytime near Christmas.
--- End quote ---
I'm assuming you mean you want it done well before then, am I correct in assuming so?
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