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Getting feedback on your manuscript draft is absolutely necessary if you are trying to get published, whether you are hoping to pursue traditional or self-publishing. But, it might be in your instinct to keep your book close to your heart.

The thing is, in reality you, as the author, are biased to your own work. You just can’t notice some problems in your manuscript because you are too close to the writing.

In order to gain insight on what the problem areas of your novel are, you’ll need some external, third party critique and comments. That way, you can edit your story to the next level and approach the publishing process with your best foot forward.

Differences Between Beta Readers and Book Editors

If you’ve been looking for someone to provide editorial feedback and you’ve done some research, you may have come across the term “beta readers.” There are also “professional book editors” as well, which are different from beta readers. The two offer services that are similar, but with key differences.

In this article, I will answer the questions “what are beta readers” and “what do book editors do,” giving you an overview of the type of editorial feedback you can expect from both. Each of these individuals will help strengthen your manuscript in important ways, if you let them.

1. The Pricing

The first key difference between beta readers and professional editors is their pricing, or lack thereof.

Beta readers are typically doing the beta reading service as a favor or as part of an exchange. These individuals are not typically publishing professionals or editorial professionals. They are either authors themselves, working on their own book project, or voracious readers who have read a ton in the genre and love to consume as many books as they can.

A beta reader could be someone you met in a writing workshop or an online forum, or they could be a friend or family member who you know is a book lover. One thing to caution about having a beta reader who is close to you personally is that sometimes it can be hard for them to separate their personal feelings for you from their objective opinion on the book. Make sure you know they are the kind of person who will still give you honest feedback on your work, so that both of you can have a constructive conversation about your piece.

On the other hand, a professional book editor is, of course, a professional offering their services and will require a payment. The price range varies from editor to editor, with some offering a sliding scale and others with fixed prices.

In order to assess if a book editor is offering you competitive pricing, make sure you shop around and look into numerous editors’ quotes. You don’t want to go all in on the cheapest service that the cheapest book editor offers, because, as the saying goes, “you get what you paid for.” On the flip side, you don’t want to automatically select the most expensive service from the most expensive book editor, as high pricing does not necessarily equal higher quality critique.

Book editors will give you a quote for your project, adjusted for word length and what your personal goals are. They may be happy to adjust their services as well, to fit your budget. But, at the end of the day, working with a professional book editor is a financial investment for your book—so treat it like one and do due diligence.

2. The Style of Feedback

Because the arrangement itself is more casual, the style of feedback you get from a beta reader is likely to be more casual. They might just have a follow-up conversation with you in person or on the phone and give you their impressions verbally. Alternatively, they might write an initial feedback message and then have a written back and forth with you. With a beta reader, you might not even fully know how they're going to give you feedback or what style it's going to come in, unless you set those expectations from the beginning.

On the contrary, with a professional book editor, the deliverables are going to be clearly laid out in your contract. If you are working with a developmental book editor, the feedback will come in the form of an editorial report called an “editorial assessment” or a “manuscript critique.” This is a separate document from your manuscript with the editor’s feedback summarized in it. Another service you can ask for is a developmental edit, which is feedback directly on your manuscript draft via inline comments and tracked changes on a Word file.

Many book editors also offer sample edits, where they either provide you with an example critique on a novel or edit one or two pages of your manuscript for free. This is to show you their skills and critique style.

So, while you will have clear expectations set with a book editor, with a beta reader you might not know what type of feedback you're going to get. Some beta readers are going to take the process very seriously. There are amazing beta readers who are going to give you extremely helpful advice that helps you strengthen your novel. However, some will offer you more generic advice that isn’t as extensive as you hoped. In this case, it might be time to consider getting a professional editor’s help.

For that reason, I do feel like the role of the beta reader and book editor go hand in hand. You shouldn’t necessarily pick one over the other.

3. The Content of Feedback

The next key difference between beta readers and a professional editor is that feedback from beta readers is typically going to be less solution-oriented and more impressionistic. They are going to give you their overall impressions of the story after they finished it, such as whether they liked it or not and what other books it reminded them of.

Beta readers can be helpful at identifying potential issues within the manuscript, such as if they didn't like the protagonist’s voice or they found a certain section was slow. However, they can be less skilled at actually identifying and pinpointing solutions to those problems.

That is where a professional editor can come in and help you nail a game plan for your revisions to ensure those issues are addressed. While both beta readers and editors are skilled at identifying issues in manuscripts, the editor is also going to help you with specific revision suggestions.

4. The Perspective

The next difference between beta readers and a professional editor is that the beta reader's perspective is one of a reader. They are supposed to represent your target audience, so ideally you will have selected beta readers who read widely in the genre you are writing in.

The best beta reader represents your ideal customer who would go out and purchase your book on their own, because that way they are going to be able to provide feedback on whether or not your story is appealing to that specific audience and whether or not it aligns with other books that they are reading.

A book editor, on the other hand, is likely going to work in a number of specialty genres and they're not necessarily going to be your target audience. However, they will have the expertise and qualifications to help you edit in that specific genre.

5. The Number

The last difference between beta readers and a professional editor is that you should have multiple beta readers and, typically, one developmental book editor. This editor is separate from your copy editor, who is separate from your proofreader. However, when it comes to beta readers, the more the merrier!

This is so you can see if the feedback across multiple beta readers is the same or if there is outlier feedback from one or two readers. I would say an ideal target range for your beta readers would be between three to six beta readers to start.

Now, I know I said the more the merrier but, remember, it ultimately is about the quality of your beta readers over the quantity. If you have three stellar, amazing, and insightful beta readers, they will be much more valuable to you than six beta readers who only give you a sentence of feedback.

Now that you know “what are beta readers” and “what do book editors do” and the differences between the two, you can see how both beta readers and professional editors are important and critical pieces of the book writing and revising process.

Thanks so much for reading and happy editing!