Beta Readers are Great
Back in January, I posted a call for "beta readers": people who read early drafts of my posts and give honest feedback.
The beta readers I picked up that way are one of my favorite things about having started Cold Takes.
Basically, one of my goals with Cold Takes has been to explain my weirdest views clearly, but it's hard to write clearly without detailed feedback on where I'm making sense and where I'm not. I have lots of preconceptions and assumptions that I don't naturally notice. And writing a blog alone doesn't get me that feedback, because:
- Most people don't want to explain how they experienced a piece - if they aren't enjoying it, they just want to click away.
- And the people who do want to help me out (e.g., friends and colleagues) aren't necessarily going to be honest enough, or representative enough of my target audience (which is basically "People who are interested in my topics but don't already have a ton of background on them").
I've tried a bunch of things to find good beta readers, from recruiting friends of friends (worked well for a bit, but I've written a lot of posts and it was hard to get sustained participation) to paying Mechanical Turk workers to give feedback (some was good, but in general they were uninterested in my weird topics and rushed through the readings and the feedback as fast they could).
The people who came in through the recruiting call in January have been just what I wanted: they're interested in the topics of Cold Takes, but they don't already know me and my thoughts on them, and they give impressively detailed, thoughtful feedback on their reactions to pieces - often a wonderful combination of "intelligent" and "honest that a lot of the stuff I was saying confused the hell out of them." Getting that kind of feedback has been a privilege.
So: THANK YOU to the following beta readers, each of whom has submitted at least 3 thoughtful reviews (and gave permission to be listed here):
Lars Axelsson
Jeremy Campbell
Kanad Chakrabarti
Craig Chatterton
Justin Dickerson
Ethan Edwards
Edward Gathuru
Stian Grønlund
Bridget Hanna
Tyler Heishman
Adam Jermyn
Elliot Jones
Ed William
Scott Leibrand
Evan R. Murphy
John O’Neill
Jaime Sevilla
Josh Simpson
Joshua Templeton
George Thoma
Martin Trouilloud
Morgan Wack
Kevin Whitaker
Arjun Yadav
Patrick Young
If you want to sign up as a beta reader, you can use this form. I have a bunch of drafts coming on AI, as I'm working on a sequel to the most important century series (working title is "The Most Important Century II: So What Do We Do?")