It’s time.
No, I’m not kidding. It really is.
Colony is officially in Beta! See? It’s listed as such on the current projects page and everything.
And this means … it’s time for a Beta call.
So, how does this work? What’s a Beta call? Quite simple really. I’m looking for grammar fanatics.
See a Beta Read is the second phase of getting novel ready for publication, the phase in which you’re looking for doubled apostrophe’s, misspelled words (or homophones), extra spaces … the works. This is proofreading time. Missing quote mark? Gotta find it. Accidental tab? Gotta find it. Word “autocorrected” something it shouldn’t have? Gotta find it!
And fix all of it, so that the final product is a polished, shining piece of literary might! Or weight. Take your pick. Colony is 334,000 words long, so that’s pretty heavy.
Either way, if this sounds interesting to you, like the kind of thing you’d like to spend your time doing, then comment below with your reasoning.
The catch? Well, this is a dedicated thing. I’ll be counting on you to be able to read 334,000 words worth of Sci-Fi Epic in a timely manner so I can release the book on time (current release window is end of October). And it definitely helps if you’ve read my work.
The reward? Well, all participating Alpha and Beta readers get a gift copy of the book on release (boo-yah!) to either keep for themselves or pass along to someone else. You’ll be thanked in the acknowledgements (either by name or by internet handle). Youalso do get the cool privilege of reading a juggernaut of a story before it actually comes out … which is pretty sweet. It’s like seeing a movie before anyone else!
Anyway, if you’ve got the time for it, leave a comment below with some details!
Unusual Things 
Would love to help you out with this. As an avid reader, especially of the sci-fi genre, it would be a pleasure to read this meticulously and help you get it ready for final production. As for speed of service, I think I can handle the volume. For reference, I recently read Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion both in about a week total.
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Sending a link to the prologue as a trial chapter so you can get a feel for things (clearly, I don’t know if you’ve Beta’d before, so …). Check your inbox!
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334000 words.
Max. that’s a third of a million. A THIRD OF A MILLION.
I would help, but I cannot commit to it in the time allotted. I routinely do this on books already released by flagging stuff on my kindle as I read, especially brand new releases where the author may not have had time to hear about all the nitpicky stuff… Let me consider this. Perhaps I could take on the last 110000 words, if you have people hitting the first part, and go from there.
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A third of a million? A mere trifle!
(I kid only a little)
Don’t worry about it, I’ve got a pretty good-sized collection of prior Alphas and Betas already, and a good chunk of them are already putting their minds to it. I usually just do the call to get some fresh blood in the mix and remind all the prior Alphas and Betas what’s going on.
You can always just enjoy the book when it comes out!
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I look forward to it!
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