Edit-Beta-Review

An Alpha Reader is someone who reads an author’s first-draft book and provides feedback on the book to the author to assist the author in improving their book.

An Alpha Reader can be:

• A friend or family member of the author,
• Another author,
• A fan of the author,
• An amateur who loves reading and giving feedback to authors,
• A professional Alpha Reader (or Editor, etc. who also provides Alpha Reading services),
• A Beta Reader,
• An ARC Reader (Advanced Review Copy Reader).

Each Alpha Reader provides different levels/types of feedback, however, the general vibe of the feedback is to look at the story from a birds-eye-view and provide guiding advice to the Author about if the story is progressing well, or if some areas need fixing. This Read does not get into the nitty-gritty aspects of the story.. This type of feedback could include (one, some or all):

• Simply if they did or did not like the book.
• What specifically they did or did not like within the book.
• Any areas where they felt things were missing in the story, character development, plot, pacing, etc.
• Constructive feedback on how the above areas could be fixed.

An Alpha Read occurs:

• The Author writes the first draft of the book.
• The author self-edits the book.
• An Alpha Reader reviews the book NOW – the first external review of a rough draft. Sometimes an Author feels their book does not require an Alpha Reader (their story is well structure/they know where the storyline is going), so they may go straight to a Beta Reader.
• The Author updates their feedback.
• A Beta Reader will read NOW.
• The Author will then update the feedback from the Beta Reader (or multiple Beta Readers).
• The Author may send the book out to more Beta Readers to provide feedback.
• Once the Author is happy with the story, they will either send it to their Professional Review Team (such as Proof Readers, Editors, Publishers, etc) for final feedback and will make changes as needed.
• Just before the book is to be published, they will send finalised copies to their ARC Readers.