So, you’ve written a book… and now you need people to look at it.  What now?

This is a tough one. You don’t want to show your book to your friends yet, because it isn’t finished, and your significant other will look it over, but chances are… he’s not your target audience.

So, now you have to find Beta Readers and critique groups.  You can check out forums like Absolute Write to search for Beta Readers. Or you can find a group of trusted writing friends to share work with.  Both of these are great in their own respect.  It’s tough when you find a brand new person to read your work, just because it means that they won’t personally know you, or what hurts your feelings.  Your friends, on the other hand… will work extra hard to find the stuff they love in your story mixed in with the stuff they hate.  (If they don’t do that… then you need new friends.)

So, now that you’ve found your preferred type of reading group… you need to know how to get together.  There are several different ways.  The first is just with emails and chats.  You need to use a good group chatting program so you can get together and talk about your stuff.  I recommend Yahoo Messenger or Aol Instant Messenger for this. Both of these programs are top notch, and make group chatting a breeze.  Google Talk is okay, but it’s just not as well designed as the other two are.

If you are feeling extra technological, you can start up a private Yahoo Group what’s cool about this is that you can upload files, keep databases with everyone’s contact information, and manage most of the stuff through email.  Then you and your friends have a small message board type place to talk freely about each other’s work without saying the same things over and over again.  This is my favorite option.  But make SURE you set your settings to private!  This is very important so you don’t accidentally make all your work public to the world.

So, if you have a critique group just starting out, give Yahoo Groups a whirl and let me know how it works out for you.  If you have questions about how to set it up, let me know in the comments below!

Bookmark This