Author Gregory Austin Reviews His Beta Reader's Feedback

I want to shine the spotlight on one of Quiethouse's beta readers. Kristina G. has been beta reading for Quiethouse for about seven months now and has received nothing but glowing reviews from the authors she reads for. Kristina is definitely one of our shining stars.

After a beta reader finishes their review and I email it to the author, I always ask the author to rate and review the beta reader. I want to make sure authors are getting what they've paid for and that this service remains helpful to authors. Gregory Austin, author of Philosophical Nonsense & Gunplay, sent a fantastic review after I returned Kristina's beta feedback to him, and I'd like to share it. There is nothing more rewarding to my little editor's heart (as far as work goes) than waking up in the morning to see great feedback from authors, whether it be regarding editing or beta reading. Here's Gregory's feedback:

Kristina was a fantastic beta reader. Not only was it clear that she took the task seriously, there were also many facets of her review that showed she had a vested interest in making the novel I submitted to your service, the best novel it is capable of being. Being a regular participant in local and online critique groups, I entered this process with an intermediate idea of how a proper beta should be, at least in my mind. Kristina far exceeded my expectations.
 
 She did a superb job of noting the parts she felt worked well, while still making clear which of those parts she felt needed to be accentuated. On the other side of that coin, she wasn’t shy about highlighting the parts she felt were underwhelming or the parts that seemed confusing. And even when confused by a certain passage, she still did everything in her power to make as much sense of it as she could, while offering suggestions to make the section more clear. Clarity, I feel, is one of the most important elements in writing, and I couldn’t have been more impressed with the way Kristina reinforced that belief in her review.
 
In my opinion, what separates a great beta reader from a casual reviewer is an innate ability to see through the exhaustion an author puts into her/his work. When an author has written and rewritten a piece so many times, it is often a challenge to isolate certain mistakes that continue to recur, draft after draft. Betas, like Kristina, are able to isolate these shortcomings and offer the author a new perspective that will grant that author the greatest chance to right certain lingering errors. I mean, it’s great that she didn’t miss the awkwardness of those tricky passages I must’ve rewritten dozens of times, but the truest value of Kristina’s services are when she finds the flaws in those passages that I, the one most familiar with my work, thought worked flawlessly.
 
I was also grateful that she chose to forward her email address. Since the review, I did reach out to her for clarification on one or two of her minor notes and she responded with both professionalism and enthusiasm, and really made this beta process that much better for me. However, if she hadn’t shared her email, it wouldn’t have changed my initial satisfaction with her review, because it was solid in and of itself.
5 out of 5 stars.

Thank you, Kristina. You are a gem. So glad you're on our team.

Gregory Austin can be found by following these links:
gregoryaustinvoiceactor.com
buffalogreg.tumblr.com

Or you can follow him on these Twitter accounts:
@BuffaloGregNY and @ElmwoodWriters