The web app, used to manage the beta-reading process, has been adding new features and functionality since its official launch last year
BetaBooks is a reader-management web app for authors that helps streamline the beta-reading and feedback process. We last covered it in August 2017, before the service officially launched. At the time, Paul Kilpatrick, a co-founder, said that 80 percent of the people who found BetaBooks thought they were a beta-reader service—that is, that they supplied beta readers. In fact, BetaBooks is primarily intended to help you manage the beta readers you already have.
However, given demand, BetaBooks has recently opened up a Reader Directory that allows authors to search for people who have expressed interest in being beta readers for new authors. If authors identify someone who’s a good fit, they send a query and sample chapter to the reader, who can then accept or decline. BetaBooks advises on its site, “The Directory is awesome, but it is not a replacement for finding your own beta community. … The majority of authors still bring their own readers.”
People who wish to volunteer to be beta readers can proactively join the Reader Directory. While authors who use the standard BetaBooks service pay $14.99 per month—and must be paying members to use the Reader Directory—the readers themselves pay nothing to participate.
Since the beginning, the founders of BetaBooks have made it clear in their communications that this business has been a personal project for them and not a full-time gig. However, starting in July, they sent out a message to authors announcing they’d hit a revenue milestone of $10,000 and that they’ve officially incorporated as BetaBooks LLC.
Bottom line: The business transparency of the owners is admirable and remarkable—and according to them, the service is growing organically and incrementally, just as they intended. If you haven’t checked out the service, you can register for a free account that offers you the most important features, limited to one book and three beta readers. It’s worth taking for a spin.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
