♥!The Young Adult Book Club!♥ discussion

Hi Everyone!

I have a random, experimental question for all of you! What do you think of a concept like this:

A Goodreads group meant to critique an author's work before it is published?

For example: If I were to create a private group where a select number of approved Goodreads readers were provided with one of my YA novels, told to read it, and then asked to share their thoughts (good and bad) with the group.

My hope would be that the members could create a round-table sort of discussion that would (hopefully) aid in the author's editorial and creative process. I suppose it's basically connecting your beta readers and turning them into a think-tank. I also expect that when the book is finally published, there would be a strong set of written and starred reviews from said members of the group and perhaps they'd want to get involved in promoting it because they have a little bit of a stake in whether it does well or not.

This is a totally experimental "grass-roots" thing that I'm going to be trying. I'm curious to know what your opinions are because many of you are very active readers and members of Goodreads. I also feel that many of you might (possibly) have some interest in a group like this -- if only because it's a little different than the normative picking up a book and reviewing it. In this way, you could point out the issues you have with it to the author or ask them to clarify that one point you never quite got!

Please let me know if you are interested in and would join a group like this. I'm actively recruiting volunteers for this experiment.

Thanks!
-Amanda (A.L. Davroe)

A.L. wrote: "Hi Everyone!

I have a random, experimental question for all of you! What do you think of a concept like this:

A Goodreads group meant to critique an author's work before it is published?
An interesting idea. I do this for a few authors right now. I think it's an excellent idea since we all see things a bit different and have different pet peeves. I'd be game.
For e..."

This is an interesting idea. Getting the beta readers together in a group to discuss what they like could turn out to be very helpful for the author as well as a lot of fun for the readers. I'd be in.

Not a bad idea. You could probably get 5 or 10 people fairly easily. Beyond that number, you'd have to do a lot of collating of comments, deciding whom to believe, and so on. I'd be unlikely to volunteer because it's very time consuming to review an entire novel.

If I volunteered and the material turned out to be badly written, I'd drop out quickly, rather than try to fix it. Maybe you'd need to start with 10 to 12 reviewers to cover dropouts.

Why not just try it and see what happens? Then report the results in feedback. Good luck!

WOW THIS IS a very nice idea! I mean getting to read the book before its out and be able to give your opinion on the book... quite interesting... It does have few setbacks, but doesn't most things have them? ... I think a book lover will give chance to any book and see how it turns out then decide what to say about it.....

I'd like to volunteer as I just got a short vacation and will be free enough to read books all time, Which is what I am going to do anyways :D