You’ve finished the first draft of your book! You’ve accomplished something millions of people aspire to—something millions of people have tried but haven’t seen through to the end. I hope you’ve taken time to bask in the joy and pride that only comes with accomplishing something huge.
But once that glow fades, you might find yourself looking around and asking: Now what?
If you’re serious about getting your book successfully published, you’ve got a long and often confusing journey ahead of you. Each book is like a person—they all have their own journey to success. There isn’t always a straightforward path to take. You’ve probably heard people talk about alpha readers, beta readers, editors, and other steps on the path to publication, but it can be difficult to know when to focus on each step and how long to stay on one step before moving on.
This article is here to help. I’ll break down the differences between alpha readers, beta readers, and the various types of editors. I’ll go over the types of services you should pay for based on your chosen publication path. I’ll walk you through the basics of self-editing. And I’ll help you start thinking about which publication path might be best for you.
Step 1: First, Take a Break
I can’t stress this enough. Take. A. Break.
You’ve spent months, maybe even years, pouring your soul into this manuscript. Just like a garden needs the winter to lie fallow and gather strength for the rigorous demands of spring, your brain needs you to take a break from your manuscript so you can gather strength for the work ahead. Step away so you can come back to it again with fresh, clear eyes. And by putting just a little distance between yourself and your precious manuscript, you will also equip yourself to receive critical feedback and rejection more mindfully and objectively.
Step 2: Start Revising
Ernest Hemingway once said, “the only kind of writing is rewriting.” So buckle up. Once the initial draft is done, you’ll be spending a significant amount of time and energy reworking your manuscript again and again (and again and again…). At bare minimum, you should expect to take yourself through a full manuscript revision after you’ve written the first draft and taken a break from it, after receiving feedback from alpha readers, after receiving feedback from beta readers, and after you’ve received whatever iterations of professional editing is best for you (more on that later).
There is no wrong or right way to revise and rewrite. Some revisions are more like touch-ups while others are deep, grueling overhauls. Some people focus on one particular issue during one pass-through and then another issue the next pass-through. Others tackle every issue all at once.
Regardless of your revising style and process, you should be thinking both about story-level elements of your manuscript (plot, characters, setting, etc) and language-level elements (language flow, grammar, punctuation, etc) as you revise.
Related: Self-Editing Part 1: Getting Started
Step 3: Find Alpha and Beta Readers
Think of alpha and beta readers as different sets of test subjects for your novel. While they both read your work and provide feedback, they complete their work from different perspectives, at different stages of the work’s refinement, and with a different focus.
Alpha readers: Alpha readers serve as your first set of critical outside eyes on your manuscript (eyes that probably should not belong to any friends or family members!). Ideally, alpha readers are writers themselves, and they should be either writing within or strongly familiar with your genre. It’s common to find alpha readers to swap manuscripts with through writing-focused social media groups. Some writers also take advantage of websites like Wattpad to allow alpha readers to read and comment on their work publicly.
A common variation on the alpha reader is the critique partner or group. A typical critique group might exchange work on a section-by-section basis at regular intervals (for example, every week or once or twice a month). Participating in a critique group is, in my opinion, essential to writer growth, especially for beginning writers. It gives you regular opportunities to not only have your work critiqued, but to critique the work of your peers.
Whether you decide to find an alpha reader to read your manuscript all at once or engage in a critique group to get your work reviewed piece by piece, having the opportunity to interact with other writers and to review their work as well as receive feedback on your own will significantly strengthen your own craft knowledge and your ability to see weaknesses in your own writing.
There’s often no set rules for what an alpha reader or critique partner should look for, so you might want to alert them to any particular issues you’re worried about. Outside of those specific issues, you can expect an alpha reader to point out awkward phrasing, confusing narration, vague characterization or description, major plot holes, and other surface-level issues as they notice them. Some might provide pointers on your grammar and punctuation. They’ll also tell you what you’re doing well and give you much-needed confidence boosts.
After receiving feedback from your alpha readers, it’s time for another draft. At this stage, you’ll want to make sure your book is just about as clean as possible, according to your current level of knowledge. You should have resolved as many of the story-level issues as you can. You should especially take a critical look at your sentence flow, grammar, and punctuation. If your sentences are riddled with awkward phrasing and easy-to-fix mistakes, it will be difficult for subsequent readers to engage with your story as a whole and provide helpful feedback.
Beta readers: If your manuscript has already been reviewed by alpha readers or critique partners and you’ve resolved all major issues (and as many minor issues as possible) according to their feedback, you’re probably ready to have your manuscript critiqued by beta readers. Beta readers are members of your target audience who would be likely to pick your book off a shelf and read it. They can be writers as well, but it’s more important that they are avid readers of your genre.
Like alpha readers, beta readers will also give you feedback on your work, but they should do it purely from a reader’s perspective. They should tell you whether your story is engaging, your characters well-rounded and worth caring about, and your pacing consistent.
In order to get the most out of beta reads, I recommend giving your readers a short, open-ended questionnaire to fill out about their experience reading your book, and use their responses as a guide for your next draft.
Related: Navigating the Beta Reading Process
Where can I find alpha/beta readers? You can find alpha readers/critique partners and beta readers through local and national writing organizations, writing conferences, websites like critiquematch.com, and social media groups dedicated to writing, workshopping, and beta reading.
Should I expect to pay alpha and beta readers? If you poke around various writing and editing websites, you’ll likely come across people offering paid alpha and beta reading services. In my experience, it isn’t necessary to pay for this level of critique. There are plenty of people who are willing to alpha and beta read for free, especially if you swap manuscripts and read their work as well.
Rather than paying for someone to be a beta reader, I feel it’s better to seek and engage in alpha and beta reading as a member of a writing community—an activity that allows you to practice being a good “literary citizen”— a concept I learned about from publishing guru Jane Friedman in her book, The Business of Being a Writer. To be a good literary citizen, you should not only seek people to read and critique your work but also seek to provide the same service to others.
By building volunteer-based reciprocal relationships through alpha and beta reading, you will grow your writer and reader network organically. As I said above, it also helps you learn to think critically about writing in general—as you spend time thinking about what works and what doesn’t in other writers’ manuscripts, you’ll be better prepared to apply that same kind of thinking to your own work.
Step 4: Start Thinking about Publication Paths
While you don’t need to make a solid commitment to either traditional or self-publication as you’re revising your manuscript, you should start exploring the pros and cons of each path, as that will affect your priorities for your manuscript going forward.
Traditional Publication: If you decide that traditional publication is right for you, your focus should not just be polishing your story-level elements to a high shine but also putting together a query package, researching literary agents and/or small publishers accepting unagented submissions, and querying. If you haven’t already, you’ll also want to start putting significant effort into reading extensively in your genre and learning the latest publishing trends to understand how you can pitch your book in the most appealing way possible.
Self-Publication: If you’d rather maintain full control of your work and are willing to manage everything from each level of editing and cover design to publicity and marketing, then you’ll need to start looking for editors (or learning how to be your own effective editor), researching the self-publication process, investigating different platforms, software, and types of professionals who can help you, and learning best ways to find readers and build a solid online platform to represent your work.
Step 5: Look Into Developmental Editing
Developmental editors provide in-depth, story-level feedback on your manuscript. Regardless of your planned publication path, you should seriously think about investing in some level of professional developmental editing for your manuscript. Long-form storytelling is a complex thing with many moving pieces: major and secondary characters, character arc, story arc, settings, worldbuilding, tension and stakes, pacing, dialogue, narrative voice, genre fit, and so much more. A good developmental editor can provide you a specialist’s outside view and provide focused feedback to show you exactly what is and isn’t working, tell you why, and help you figure out what to do about it.
As with other elements of the writing journey, there is no one-size-fits-all formula here. Even though I am a developmental editor, I don’t necessarily think that every author needs to pay for a full developmental edit in order to succeed.
Some writers, particularly those who have seriously educated themselves on the craft of storytelling, who have written multiple books, and who have had many helpful beta reads on their current manuscript, might only need one or two manuscript reviews, which is a less-comprehensive version of a developmental edit.
Others, especially those who are hoping to attract an agent and publish traditionally, might want a partial developmental edit to ensure that their first twenty to fifty pages are rock-solid since this is what agents typically request to see.
Still others might hire a developmental editor to review their query package to help them stand out from the slush pile. And some might decide that they do, in fact, need a full developmental edit—possibly multiple rounds—to help their manuscript reach its full potential.
At this stage, the developmental editing approach is up to the author—what they feel their manuscript needs in order to reach their publication goals and how much money they want/can afford to invest in developmental editing. But regardless of how you decide to approach this important step, the most important thing, in my opinion, is to get some sort of professional story-level feedback.
Related: What Is Working With an Editor Like?
Step 6: Look Into Language-Focused Editing
Once all story-level issues have been resolved, you’ll want to fine-tune your book’s language on a sentence-by-sentence level. You’ll also want to ensure it is error-free.
Again, the choices you make about seeking professional line editing (which focuses on style, consistency, and flow), copy editing (which focuses on correctness and clarity), and proofreading (which eliminates all remaining typos) will depend on your chosen publication path. If you’re seeking traditional publication, I don’t typically recommend paying for extensive language-focused services, as the publisher will pay for this once your manuscript has been acquired.
If you’re worried that your prose style or poor grammar and punctuation will turn agents and publishers off, the most I feel an author seeking traditional publication should pay for is a partial line edit or copy edit—twenty to fifty pages or so. This would allow you to see what kind of mistakes you typically make and what speech patterns and habits are interfering with your goals. You can then take the editor’s feedback and work through the rest of your manuscript with a greater awareness of your weaknesses and examples of how to correct them.
On the other hand, if you are self-publishing, then you should seriously consider paying for line editing, copy editing, and proofreading services. Your book will have a greater chance of success if it is as cleanly edited as possible.
What about writing software? Many authors use AI-assisted programs like Hemingway Editor, ProWritingAid, and Grammarly to check their manuscripts for wordiness, passive voice, grammar and punctuation errors, and other issues. However, I don’t feel these programs can adequately replace an experienced human editor who can understand your unique writing style and voice, your artistic vision, and the conventions of your genre.
That said, I also understand that multiple rounds of editing do add up, and self-published authors also have to fund other important elements like book formatting and cover design. Again, there is no one-size-fits-all solution here, and it’s up to you to decide how much professional language-level editing you can reasonably afford to invest in your work.
Step 7: Start Planning Your Next Book
My last piece of advice might seem counterintuitive: Start thinking of your next book before publishing this one. Start outlining and researching. Start making a timeline of when you’ll start writing. Better yet, start writing now.
Why? Why divide your attention between two (or more) writing projects?
Because your identity as a writer does not hang on this one book.
To be brutally honest: there’s a good chance this book may not succeed.
You might not get an agent. You might not sign with a publisher. You might not get glowing reviews. Your marketing campaign might fall flat. You might have a hard time finding and connecting with the right audiences. You might publish and realize that someone else has just released a very similar book which is getting all the attention.
Publishing is a tough, tough game. It’s wild and unpredictable. It’s full of runaway successes, yes, but it’s also full of rejection and failure at every level. Even the biggest, most successful publishers know this.
So don’t put your eggs all in one basket. Don’t stake all your hopes on this one book making it.
The best way to keep going in the face of near-inevitable rejection and failure? Have another book up your sleeve. Have another project that lights up your brain, that brings you back to your computer or notebook every day with determination and joy and passion.
Because writing—not publishing success—is what makes you a writer.
Wrapping Up
Like I said at the beginning, successful publishing is a long, tough road. At times, it might seem more like an endless maze than a road. Sometimes you might feel lost or discouraged or angry. Sometimes you might feel like giving up.
But take heart; it is possible. We live in an incredible age with incredible developments and technology that allows more people to succeed in publishing than ever before.
And if you get stuck, reach out. Talk to a book coach. Talk to other writers. Talk to editors (a consultation with me is free!). Many people have been where you are, and they will be happy to help you.
You can do this.
Happy writing!