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Should beta readers research the works they read?

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citymouse

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I was in another forum (not AW) discussing beta readers. I said that I try to find beta readers who not only like the kinds of novels I write (intrigue) but also those who would be likely to be familiar with the time period and subject matter.
For example if I were writing a novel about the American Southwest and that included Native American customs in the 1800s, I wouldn't seek out beta readers in Scotland or Australia. The chances are that, unless these readers had made a study of mid-century USA and the great Indian wars, they wouldn't be helpful in steering me away from errors in fact.

One of the forum members said something that I hadn't considered before. He said that beta readers should research the subject either before of during their reading.

My question is is, it customary for beta readers to do research for the authors they read for?
Personally, I feel this is the author's job and as I said before I feel the authors should seek out readers who would be likely familiar with the subject.

Any thoughts on this?
C
 

HeronW

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Beta readers aren't fact checkers--that's a whole 'nuther field and extremely time consuming. If you're being paid by the hour to fact check, you can spend a long time and lots of your employer's $ verifying all sorts of things--but does that matter in a work of fiction? It shouldn't. Unfortunately there's those readers who bitch and moan because someone put the wrong street in the wrong city--as the reader completely forgets he's reading 'a work of fiction'. Finding a specific beta reader to match the writer's area may be extremely difficult. And again, who's to say the writer didn't make up something because they wanted to? I want my beta readers to look for the obvious: grammar/spelling/punctuation, and for continuity, for logic errors, for things that should or shouldn't be in a certain place on the page or the chapter. I think that's more important than does Cranston Rhode Island have an Elm St. running N-S or E-W.

Facts shoud be verified by the author--their name is on the book, they are the ones who'll get the ire from readers for things which are wrong.

I do translations with my partner, Hebrew to English. I don't know if the facts are correct but I'm there to make sure they're spelled right and are in context for the legal or scientific paper. I'll put the modifier before the noun, convert kilometers to miles but I have no idea if what I'm doing is 'true'. It is true according to the original paper given to me.
 
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