PCP Beta Readers

At Pacific Crest Publishing we understand how frustrating it is to open up a promising new book from an unfamiliar author, only to have your enjoyment ruined by serious compositional errors such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, incorrect word usage, tensing conflicts, etc.. We also understand how painful it can be for an author to spend months—or sometimes years!—writing a newly-launched novel, only to discover that editing errors or other structural issues hold your book back while your competition surges past you in the sales rankings. ‘Hire an editor’ is a common refrain from understandably upset readers, but most professional editors charge fees which often exceed the yearly gross sales generated by a new indie author’s books. That’s where we come in. Our goal is to provide a platform where indie authors can collaborate with their most avid readers to produce the highest possible quality novels before those novels hit the e-shelves. We understand that most indie authors don’t have the resources to hire professional editors but, while a system like ours can’t fully replace a professional editor, our system can approximate several components of such an invaluable creative collaborator—best of all, using our service won’t cost its participating authors or readers any money! Here’s how our app works: An author finishes the first pass of edits on his or her novel(la)’s manuscript and uploads this first draft to our site. During upload, the author determines the ‘beta reading window’ and sets a deadline for potential applicants to participate (in our experience this window is usually 2-4 weeks from the initial upload to Pacific Crest Publishing). Interested readers then see the newly-available novel(la) and apply to become beta readers for it. After being individually approved by the author, these readers gain access to the book and can begin beta reading. All of these approved beta readers then have the author-defined period (again, usually 2-4 weeks from the initial upload date) to read the book, highlight errors, leave comments/criticisms in the comments section attached to the book’s private details page, and give the book a 1-5 star rating. This feedback is absolutely crucial to crafting a competitive product for today’s increasingly crowded e-shelves. When the beta window closes, access to the book is closed to all readers whether they participated or not. The author can then peruse the highlighted words or passages tagged by ALL of the participating beta readers, and these tags will be easily visible on a SINGLE document—no more shuffling through a dozen or more manuscripts to collate your readers’ inputs! This reduces the amount of time needed to review this type of feedback and incorporate it into your manuscript by up to 95%! We’d like to be clear about our authors’ intellectual property (IP) rights: Pacific Crest Publishing is NOT in any way, shape, or form creatively or financially involved in YOUR manuscript when you upload it for beta reading purposes. We don’t even want your money—and, more importantly, we don’t want your painstakingly crafted IP! What we want is to provide a place for authors and their readers to smoothly collaborate in an effort to improve the overall quality of our most cherished works and favored pastimes. We want you to be justifiably PROUD of your book when you launch it. So download the app and take a look around. We’re confident you’ll like what you see!