Craft Chat Apps for Beta Reading

[tyes]

I am now working through the process of facilitating beta reading for my second novel. Like my first novel, collating everyone's feedback, comments, highlights etc is then a manual effort on my part, since I have issued the novel as a printed book. A 'tracked changes' Word document would make this far easier, but then my beta readers prefer a printed book which is fine.

Still this has raised a question that I explored last year with my first novel, which is if this process can be better managed using some form of mobile app. Since my day job is a software developer, I recognize that there would be a range of insights that can be provided through an app that may be valuable, including analytics on page reading, version control, live reader tracking and surveys.

I have dabbled and trialed a few of these, but most don't unlock any real features unless they are the paid edition. I am wondering if anyone else has made use of these and if they found them beneficial / worth the money? Some of these also offer a community of prospective readers which sounds like a nice idea, but I'm not sure that's a selling point in my case.

• BetaReader.io
• BetaBooks (Web only)
• Edit Out Loud (Audio-based beta reading)
• Heybeta (Might be Web Only)

I'm sure I've seen others, but couldn't find them in my limited Googling. I am also not aware if some of the standard eBook platforms like Kindle might support the sharing of reader tracking data back to the author.

Have you used a beta reading platform / mobile application as an author or a reader? What were your thoughts?

 

[Nikky Lee]

I haven't used any app before, though I can 100% understand the appeal. The last time I used the combine feature in MS Word to collate all the comments and track changes into one document. It took a bit of fiddling to get right though.

That said, not long ago my newsletter organiser app (Story Origin) added a beta reading feature, which I might trial next time I send out a manuscript for feedback. I pay to use StoryOrigin's newsletter coordinating and review copy distribution features, so this is a nice bonus feature/value add from them.



The guide mentioned in the above screenshot: How to find beta readers and collect feedback