Beta Readers Can't Write Without ALL of Them! #WritersLife #Indieauthor #SelfPublishing

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In a hurry to get a book out on the deadline I'd told my readers it would be out, I skipped one of my beta readers. I value that person's thoughts, but it would be one more week before it came back and I could get it off to my final copy editor. So I didn't send her the book.

Skip forward. I sent her the published book she didn't beta read as a gift, and she'd just finished beta-reading the next book in the series. She called to inform me I needed to make two changes in the current WIP due to what I'd put in the book she hadn't read until now.

One was a medical issue the other a character issue.

I learned a huge lesson from this. I will never put a book out without it going through ALL my beta readers, proofers, and editors. Each one has a special talent, and in this case, I lost track of medical issues and a huge character trait that everyone should have realized, but this reader found it, and thankfully, before I'd published the book.

Before this had happened, I'd already decided that I wasn't shoving books out the door to stay on a schedule this year. I'm putting quality books out. They will be published only when they are ready, not because I'd put it to out to the Universe the book would be available on a certain day.

A writer can write a good book, but it's the beta readers and editors who make it sparkle and shine.