Let’s get one thing straight: not all feedback is good feedback. In fact, a depressingly large proportion of it is the literary equivalent of asking a vegan to review your steakhouse. Technically they read the menu, but were they ever really your audience?

We live in a culture that treats opinion like currency. Everyone’s got one. Everyone’s desperate to spend it. And nowhere is this more evident than in the world of beta reading—a supposedly sacred process in which brave authors hand over their embryonic manuscripts to friends, lovers, ex-wives, and total strangers in the desperate hope someone will “get it.” Most don’t.

Know Thy Manuscript (Before It’s Murdered by Committee)

Before you even think about soliciting feedback, ask yourself: do you actually know what your manuscript is? Is it a quiet literary allegory disguised as sci-fi? A philosophical middle finger wearing the trench coat of genre fiction? A slow-burn deconstruction of capitalism wrapped in alien gloop?

If you can’t answer that, neither can your beta reader. And you’ll deserve every clueless comment that comes slouching back across your inbox like a drunken tortoise.

Audience Matters. (No, Really.)

Let me put it in culinary terms for the metaphorically impaired: if someone hates seafood, they are not qualified to tell you whether your oysters are overcooked. They might be able to describe their gag reflex in exquisite detail, but that’s not useful culinary feedback—that’s autobiography.

Likewise, if your beta reader consumes nothing but cosy mysteries and thinks House of Leaves was “a bit confusing,” why in the name of Borges are you handing them your experimental novella about time, recursion, and the semiotics of grief?

I Know a Writer. I Know Your Pain.

A personal note, if I may. A close friend is a writer. A good one, in fact. But our ideas are so philosophically incompatible that they could be placed on opposite ends of a Möbius strip. Every time they read my work, they suggest alterations that, while technically well-formed, have the uncanny knack of annihilating the entire point of the piece. When I respond, “That’s a great idea—why don’t you write it?” they get cross.

Because here’s the truth: most beta readers don’t give you feedback on your book. They give you notes on the book they wish you’d written.

Signal vs Noise: Spotting the Useful Reader

There’s a simple test I use to distinguish signal from noise.

Bad beta feedback:

“I didn’t like the main character.”
“Why don’t they just call the police?”
“This story would be better with a love triangle.”

Good beta feedback:

“The way you structured the timeline echoes the narrator’s fragmentation—was that deliberate?”
“I wasn’t confused until Chapter 5, which made the earlier ambiguity retroactively frustrating.”
“The tonal shift on page 42 feels earned but abrupt—was that intentional?”

In short: good feedback interrogates execution. Bad feedback critiques intention.

The Beta Reader Interview (Yes, You Need One)

You wouldn’t hire a babysitter without asking if they’ve ever met a child. Why would you let someone babysit your manuscript without screening for genre literacy?

Ask them:

• What do you normally read?
• What do you hate reading?
• Can you name a book you loved that nobody else seemed to?
• Have you read [Insert book similar to yours]? Did you like it?

If they look at you blankly or start talking about Colleen Hoover, back away slowly.

The Beta Reader Zoo: Know Your Species

Here are a few common subspecies to watch for:

• The Rewriter: Wants to turn your Kafkaesque nightmare into Eat, Pray, Love. Run.
• The Literalist: “But how would that actually work in real life?” Mate, it’s a parable. About entropy.
• The Cheerleader: “Loved it! Don’t change a thing!” (Translation: I skimmed it during Bake Off.)
• The Cynic: Thinks everything is nihilistic, including your dedication page.
• The Goldilocks: Rare. Reads the book you actually wrote, not the one they wish you had. Cultivate this one like a bonsai tree.

Curate, Don’t Crowdsource

Beta reading is not a democratic process. You are not running a focus group for toothpaste branding. You are searching for a handful of individuals who understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and whether you’ve pulled it off—or fallen on your clever, post-structuralist arse.

Better three brilliant readers than thirty who think you should add a dragon in Chapter Two.

Final Thought

Your beta reader is not your editor. They’re not your therapist. And they’re definitely not your mum (unless your mum has an MA in critical theory and a fetish for broken narrative structures).

Choose wisely.

Or don’t – and enjoy reading thirty pages of feedback that begins, “I don’t usually read this sort of thing, but…”

PS: I love how Dall-E totally misfired on the cover image. lol