Review: Early Readers Catch the Worms by Carol Beth Anderson

Early Readers Catch the Worms
by Carol Beth Anderson

My Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Non-fiction/ self publishing

Blurb:
Empower yourself to build teams of alpha, beta, and ARC readers who follow through and help you write better novels!

Ever throw an apple away because you found a worm inside? Worms slither into novel manuscripts too … weaknesses and errors that make readers want to throw away a book (or trash it in reviews)! But effective early readers catch those worms.

This comprehensive guide will teach you to get results from your alpha and beta readers with these tools:

*Practical, step-by-step methods for building and optimizing early reader teams
*Simple strategies to improve reader follow-through
*Access to over a dozen editable templates for communicating with alpha and beta readers

Jumpstart your book launch with early reviews! This book is packed with tips for building an ARC (Advance Review Copy) team, including:

*Where to find ARC readers
*How to encourage ARC readers to actually leave reviews
A fun way to incentivize ARC readers to find your lingering typos

Whether you’re already published or about to write your first book, Early Readers Catch the Worms will help you crack the code on early reader systems so you can write a novel that readers want to buy.

Get the feedback you need … before you publish.

My Review

I received a free copy of this book from the author through Booksprout and voluntarily reviewed it.

When I first heard of this book I knew I wanted to read it. This is the first non-fiction author book I’ve seen that focuses specifically on early readers and I thought it would be great to read a whole book about that topic and see how the author addresses it. Having been part of the arc process from both sides, as a reader and as author assistant, I do have a fair amount of experience with this topic and I hoped to learn more and see how another author handles this.

Early Readers Catch the Worms was a great read. The author takes readers through the whole process from alpha readers to beta readers to arc readers and addresses a large variety of topics and questions related to those. This book was so in depth and much longer than I had expected. The author really goes beyond what I had expected and I like in depth look she gives at the whole process. There are helpful links to resources, blog posts and more along the way.

This book is mostly aimed at self publishers and I think those get the most value from this book, but authors who don’t self publish probably can get some helpful information from this as well. The book explains the various types of early readers and advice and tips on how to handle the whole process and incorporate the feedback you get. It delves into everything from how to invite early readers to your early reader team, to how to find potential early readers and how big your team should be, as well a variety of other topics related to the process. There are examples messages/ emails about every step of the process, form contacting potential members, letting them know their copy is available and what you expect from them to following up afterwards. I think these are really valuable for authors who don’t know where to start or want to see what these messages can look like.

I really like some of her advice like how important good communication is, as this is something I strongly believe too. And I like her tips to stay in touch with your early reader teams and remind them in a friendly manner of your book without being pushy. There are multiple pieces of advice like those that really resonated with me. My knowledge before reading this book was mostly about arc reader teams and a bit about beta readers, this book added to my knowledge of both topics and also taught me a lot about alpha readers, about which I didn’t have much knowledge yet.

My only complaint about the book is that at times it seems to focus a bit too much on the author’s own process, which sounds like a very solid process, but I would’ve liked to see a few more ideas on how you could handle parts of it differently. There are a lot of ways to handle early reader teams and it makes sense the author can’t address them all, but at times I think a few more options or ideas would’ve been nice.

To summarize: This is a great in depth non-fiction book about early readers. From alpha readers to beta readers and arc readers this book dives into all 3 early reader types and explains the whole process for finding, contacting and handling these early reader teams. It’s a very in depth and comprehensive look at early readers and how as an author you can handle the whole process. It’s full with great advice, tips and tricks and also ideas on how the customize things to fit your own team. I would’ve liked to see a few more different ideas than her main way for handling these teams, but that’s the only thing I felt was missing from this book. While it covered some things I already knew, it also expanded my knowledge and filled in some gaps in my knowledge. If you want to know more about how to handle your early reader teams or change/ improve how you currently run your early reader teams this book definitely is worth a read.

Links:
– Goodreads
– Bookbub
– Amazon

You can also read my review on Goodreads and Bookbub.