Baking Up a Bestseller: Why Every Author Needs Beta Readers

Writing a book is a lot like baking — you start with raw ingredients (ideas and scenes), mix them together into a tasty dough (first draft), bake it into a complete creation (edit revise) and then finally get to enjoy the fruits of your labor (publish).

But before taking that perfect cookie out of the oven, every baker knows that the dough must be taste tested! The same rule applies for aspiring authors. Getting feedback from beta readers throughout the entire cooking…err writing process is essential for crafting a truly delicious story.

Your Beta Baking Team

As an indie author, I recommend having two tiers of beta readers to help sample your book dough during different phases:

The Secret Ingredient Testers (3–5 ideal readers)

These select taste-testers offer feedback when the ingredients are still being mixed together in early drafts. Their job is quality control — to point out areas that feel:

- Confusing (the plot is too jumbled)
- Boring (the pace is falling flat)
- Unbelievable (a character’s actions don’t make sense)

With their suggestions, you can tweak your recipe to make the scenes pop with flavor, spice up slow sections, and ensure character motivations are crystal clear before throwing the dough in the metaphorical oven.

The Launch Squad Hype Team (20+ readers)

Once the final book is ready after rounds of editting and revisions, it’s time to generate a buzz! This wider crowd of beta readers helps spread the word leading up to your launch date with advanced reviews and testimonials to tempt new readers.

You provide the full story, and they’ll supply the sweet praise to help your marketing. Their positive feedback is the icing on top of your cake drawing attention and driving pre-orders!

Mixing Up Success

Baking an irresistible book, just like a delicious cookie, takes careful measurements, quality ingredients, and some outside opinions to perfect the flavor. Always enlist beta readers at different stages for the feedback you need to improve the recipe.

With their help, you’ll have all the right ingredients for cooking up a bestselling novel! Now, are you hungry for more writing tips or dessert? Let me know in the comments!

Take care and Bake on…

Eric G Reid — Co-Founder of Skinny Brown Dog Media.