Yes and no, but here’s the real judge and jury

“I just want to know if my writing is any good,” my authors often say. I am a nonfiction book editor.

Aha. The fear factor.

Author Anne Lamott and others give you permission to write a shitty (her word) first draft. So do it. You don’t have to show it to anyone. Just bang it out. Even my idol Stephen King roughs out his work with the door closed. It’s the second draft that gets shown to selected critical readers.

With your writing, you’ve got to climb up the ladder to reach the high diving board and just jump. Show smaller sections to trusted readers. Listen to many, not just one. And certainly not someone who is related to you by marriage, DNA, Facebook, or work.

This is where beta readers come in

When an author has trepidation about the content of their book or quality of their message, I often suggest a beta reader process. To briefly describe the process, I help the author find about a dozen readers of the genre and ask if they will read the manuscript and respond to about ten questions about it that cannot be answered by yes or no.

Instead of asking, “What did you think about this memoir?” we ask, “Do you want the recipes woven into the story or gathered at the back of the book?” “What questions do you have for the author that were not answered in this leadership guide?” “What did you find to be new nuggets of information?”

Then we look for patterns of comments (your dialogue needs to be shorter; your descriptions aren’t quite giving me a picture; I had trouble following the plot; why did you spend so much time talking about your mother; how do I put these leadership practices to work with my team). Then take action with a red pencil, Track Changes, or scissors.

Your early readers will tell you if your writing sucks. If you’ve already published, you may see nasty Amazon reviews. You won’t see book sales (for a number of other reasons too). Like any product from household cleaner to shampoo, if the product isn’t resonating with buyers, you won’t see sales.

How to find beta readers

I’m not shirking my duty as an editor in sidestepping the “does this suck” question. I may or may not be the author’s intended target reader. If I fit the profile of the person the book was written for, fine. But usually I am not. So my comments, although valuable from an editorial perspective, are not coming from the POV of that all-important reader.

Do not pay for beta readers. Do not pay a service to read your book manuscript and provide comments. Do not recruit other writers unless they write in your genre.

Beta readers are people who love to read. Some enjoy mystery/thrillers. Others are romance novel addicts. You’ll find history buffs and self-help readers.

Goodreads has a beta reader group. You can put out a call on your Facebook page for likely readers or their friends who regularly read what you are writing. You can ask your local bookstore about book clubs that select and discuss books in your genre. These can be a recruitment pool for beta readers.

They review for the joy of reading. Do not pay them, but if you do offer a bribe/bonus, a modest gift card for Amazon or Starbucks is always appreciated once they send back their comments in a timely manner. You may thank your beta readers by name in your Acknowledgments section too.

Give your beta readers a Word document via email and a deadline (about two weeks). Figure another week to nudge the stragglers. Some will not respond.

I try for a dozen cold readers and hope to get back nine or ten solid responses. They respond to the questions via email.

Of course there’s always a Karen in the bunch. Someone who unexpectedly goes off on style or voice or plot. Someone will whine about something, and if it’s just one person, disregard their comments. They’re having a bad day. Unless they can offer some logical substantive feedback, move on.

Good to one reader may be great to another

Now about that “good” thing. Good to one person is “best book I ever read” and to another your book is “unreadable.” That’s why one book does not fit all. The universe of likely readers for any book is narrow.

To an editor, like me, one measure of good is mechanical (Are commas in the right place?) and another is substantive (Is the manuscript well organized or scattered? Does the title grab attention? Are characters developed? Do the title and subtitle and cover design convey what the book is about?).

Tell your story. Find likely beta readers. Ask them questions about what you want to know about. Then revise your manuscript appropriately. Polish your work with a professional edit. Work with a cover designer. Then your readers and the marketplace will be the final judge of good—no matter what your mother-in-law thinks.

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Sandra Wendel is a book editor and NAIWE member whose new book on editing doesn’t suck. It’s titled Cover to Cover: What First-Time Authors Need to Know about Editing, and it has won three industry awards so far. Fellow NAIWE members who would like a free ebook download code for this book should contact the author at Sandra@SandraWendel.com.

This blog originally appeared on Medium.com in the Start It Up publication. Follow Sandra Wendel’s blog on Medium and join the new First-Time Authors Club on Facebook to interact with authors who need editors.