Beta Readers

You choose what leaves your computer

• Tick the chapters, front matter or back matter you want read — nothing is selected by default, so the unfinished ending never goes out by accident
• Add a note asking for what you actually want: “does the reveal land?” It’s the first thing they see
• Alternate drafts of a chapter are never sent — a reader shouldn’t be asked to review a decision you haven’t made
• What you send is a frozen copy, so you can keep writing the moment you press send without the text moving under someone who is reading it

Each reader gets their own link

Not one link passed around. Each person has their own, which is what makes everything else work: you always know who left a note, and if one link goes somewhere it shouldn’t, you withdraw that one and everybody else carries on.

• No sign-up. They click, and they’re reading — a beta reader is doing you a favour, not filling in a form
• Withdraw one reader’s link without touching the others, and restore it if you change your mind
• Links run out on their own — 30, 90 or 180 days, extendable at any time
• Readers never see each other’s notes, so the second opinion is a second opinion rather than an echo of the first

What reading looks like for them

It reads like a book: proper indents, no gaps between paragraphs, and a dark page at night if that’s how their computer is set. On a phone it’s just the page.

• Select any sentence and four coloured pens appear — mark it, and a card opens to say why
• Three one-tap reactions for the things people most want to say and least want to type: confused, this landed, loved it
• A panel for writing freely about the chapter as a whole — most of what a reader has to say isn’t about one sentence
• Everything saves as they go, and their marks are waiting when they come back tomorrow
• A clear “I’ve finished reading” button so you know their notes are ready — and they can still add more afterwards

Their notes, back on your page

Choose a reader and their marks appear against your chapters — one reader at a time, because two people disagreeing about the same paragraph is the most useful thing this produces, and merging them would make neither legible.

• Marks are found by the words they were on, not by counting characters — so a note still lands correctly after you’ve edited around it
• If you’ve rewritten a passage entirely, its notes are kept and shown separately with what was marked, rather than quietly dropped
• Send any note to your revision binder to deal with later; ticking it off there never changes what the reader wrote
• See who has opened it, who is still reading, and who has finished
• Expand a reader list to search names and browse twenty readers at a time; select a name to open that person’s feedback directly
• Adding readers to an existing share requires an active Cloud add-on, with a maximum of 50 readers per share. Existing feedback and revocation remain available without renewing
• Search passage notes and browse them in pages; cards use a single column in narrow panels and two where space allows