Beta readers wanted!

I’m looking for two or three beta readers.

If you’re interested, please get in touch with me!

Content

This is a series of novellettes.

• Length: About 10,000 words per episode (equivalent to about 45 standard pages and 50 minutes of pure reading time)
• Genre: Crime, Adventure, Time Travel
• Type: Easy reading, intentionally relaxing and light entertainment

The individual episodes are self-contained and can be read in practically any order. However, I still recommend reading the first episode to understand the mechanics of the dream journeys. Otherwise, the main characters’ behaviour might seem a bit strange.

Content Warnings

…there aren’t really any.

The text is suitable for young adults. I rarely use swear words, and when I do, they are rather tame by today’s standards. There are no explicit sex scenes, nor is there any excessive violence.

Of course, a good crime story needs a dead body or two, and there is some action as well.

What am I looking for?

Of course, a little more than just “I liked it”. 😉

• I’m interested in your thoughts while you were reading. Did anything surprise or bother you? What made you laugh?
• Do the characters seem consistent and believable?
• Do the historical periods feel authentic?
• Was anything too predictable and therefore boring?
• Did you have any difficulty understanding anything? Should I have explained certain parts in more detail?
• Immersion is particularly important to me. I want you to be able to lose yourself in the text. Did you stumble over any part while reading? Did you have to read it several times to understand it?

And last but not least:

• The text was written by me in German and subsequently translated into English. Did you spot any obvious translation errors or phrasing that sounds unnatural?

What do I not need?

• Historical Checks: Although the episodes are set in different historical periods, their primary purpose is to entertain. I therefore consider factual errors that would only be noticed by someone with specialist knowledge of the subject to be acceptable.
• Sensitivity reading is not something I’m looking for at this stage.
• Proofreading: As the text is based on a machine translation, spelling mistakes are very unlikely. If you do stumble across any, feel free to report them. However, this shouldn’t be your main focus.
• Adherence to genre conventions: Every episode is different; one might be more of a crime story, another more of an adventure. I also enjoy playing with genre tropes. This is a deliberate choice.
• No feedback on marketability, please. I am not pursuing any commercial goals with this project.

Format

I can provide you with the text in the following formats:

• On a website for beta readers. It looks basically the same as this website, but it contains the proofreading text with numbered paragraphs so you can specify where your comments apply.
• As a PDF with extra-wide margins. Ideal for PDF readers and for making notes by hand (provided you have neater handwriting than I do).
• As a Word file with standard pages. You can make your comments here using “track changes”.
• As an ePUB file for your e-book reader.

Two things are important:

• It should go without saying that you must not share the text you are beta reading.
• Whichever format you prefer, please make sure you can export your comments afterwards in a way that I can read them. If you’re not sure or if you use other file formats, we should test beforehand whether I can open them.

By the way, you are also welcome to give feedback on episodes that have already been published. Since I publish purely digitally, it’s easy to make sensible changes later on.

How quickly?

I try to publish a new episode every three to four months, which doesn’t leave much time for long testing phases. On the other hand, they are novellettes that can be read quickly.

Usually, a first release candidate is available about a month before publication, for which you would then have about two weeks.

Just remember, fun comes first. If you haven’t got time at that moment, then so be it.

And if you realise while reading that the text isn’t to your taste, you can stop at any time. You don’t need to give a reason – tastes differ, after all. Please just let me know briefly so that other interested people can take your place.

What’s in it?

You will be credited by name as a beta reader, if you wish.

As the project is not commercial, meaning I have no income from it myself, payment is unfortunately not possible.

So? Are you in?

Then please get in touch!

I look forward to hearing from you.