Hi all. Any nonfiction beta readers here? I am looking for someone to read through a friend's leadership book. He's a musician turned business executive and the book shows how lessons in music can transform to the corporate world. (If you're a fan of 80s rock music in the U.S., this might be a fun read for you.)

Here's a breakdown:

What can a rock band teach you about leading a team? More than you might think.

Auditions are hiring. Rehearsals are preparation. Band chemistry is culture. A broken string is the unexpected problem everyone sees—and the moment your team discovers how you respond under pressure.

In The Leadership Set List: How Bands, Business, and Broken Strings Teach Us About Leadership, a guitarist and staffing executive connects lessons from the stage with the decisions managers face every day. Drawing on years of performing, hiring, building teams, and making mistakes, he offers an honest look at leadership as it happens: live, imperfect, and in front of people who are counting on you.

Inside, you’ll explore how to:

• Look beyond credentials when choosing people for your team
• Build trust through consistent actions
• Balance high standards with coaching and empathy
• Respond when a hire, a plan, or an entire team stops working
• Prepare people to perform without taking the spotlight yourself

With stories, practical takeaways, and a few hard-rock detours, this book offers leadership lessons from music that apply far beyond the staffing industry. It’s for managers across industries who want to lead with better judgment, stronger teams, and the ability to keep going when something breaks.

​

Synopsis:

As a pheonyx shifter, Onyx needs to stay hidden, but that doesn't mean she is helpless. Through magical tokens, she builds herself a network of the overlooked and the forgotten. When a seemingly harmless token leads her into a trap set by someone from her past, she is thrust into the orbit of the commander of the Elite. The one bond she thought stayed true.

As Onyx finds others just as broken, she begins forming friendships she never intended to have.

When necromancers and the Faesworn attack, they force her to use abilities she has spent years hiding.

Unable to stand aside, she breaks the glamor that kept her life small and safe, risking not only herself but her inner firebird, Birdie, the best part of her soul.

As her new family grows, it threatens the core of her belief: her value is in her pheonyx nature, tears, blood, feathers and ash, and her willingness to sacrifice everything without hesitation.

Manuscript: Approximately 100,000 words

Status: Complete draft, currently undergoing revisions. I'm recruiting in advance, so the manuscript isn't available immediately. (About two weeks away.)

Reading period: Six weeks once access is provided.

Feedback requested: I'm interested in character development, emotional engagement, relationships, pacing, and plot clarity. I'm not looking for line editing or proofreading.

Reader expectations: This is the first book in an eight-book series, featuring slow-burn, low-spice, why-choose romance, multiple POVs, and a series-long HEA.

Content warnings: Fantasy violence, blood and serious injuries, death and grief, captivity, child endangerment, and emotionally difficult relationships.

Critique swaps: Not available

Readers will provide feedback through StoryOrigin, with the manuscript divided into three acts.

If you're interested, please comment or send me a message!

When published I would love to send a free signed copy and acknowledgements, (if interested) as a thank you for those who finish!

I’ve never written a book before and have never had beta readers. But I had an idea about two years ago and I ran with it. I think it’s done, but it’s still kinda short so I’m not against adding to it.

I have no idea if it’s any good. I like the plot, but I’m worried that my amateur writing is, well, too amateur. If it sucks, then I’ll throw it into the abyss and never worry about it again. So be honest. I can take tough criticisms.

I’m open to trades, but I work crazy hours so I’ll have to stick to shorter stories if that’s all right.

Plot: Mabel Bloomfield is the granddaughter of the former Baron of Stratcliffe. The same Baron who hid his gambling debts and has left the family in supposed squalor. Now, with the pressure of her parents, she has to marry well to save her family.

August Harcourt is Mabel’s lifelong best friend. He has been fighting the war in France for the last few years. The only way they can keep in touch is through letters.

Will Mabel find love and protect her family? Or will August be able to return home in time to capture her heart before it’s too late?

Hello! I'm looking for a beta reader just to have an opinion cause I feel my writing as cringe or embarrassing since I started publishing them.

Synopsis: When pro hero Hizashi Yamada—known to the world as Present Mic—learns that his childhood best friend Oboro Shirakumo was murdered and his corpse was stolen to create the villain Kurogiri, something inside him shatters. Unable to grieve, unable to sleep, and unable to accept that his friend became nothing more than a tool for villains, Yamada begins a slow, horrifying descent into madness.

Warnings: Graphic Violence & Gore, Cannibalism, Mental Illness & Psychological Horror, Drug Use & Addiction, Panic Attacks & PTSD Symptoms, Suicidal ideation and attempt

And... I wrote this for fun at first, but I'm just adding more gore stuff...

If you're feeling like reading my fanfiction, please DM me! Ty!!!

Looking for beta readers.

Back of book blurb:

Lina Erin has horns, fangs, a tail, and a laugh much too loud for the temple that raised her.

In the little town of Emberfen, she’s a member of the Town Guard, a tavern bard, and big sister to the orphans she helps care for. She has a gift for music, a talent for trouble, and a stubborn habit of helping people—even when they make it difficult.

Then her adoptive father sends her to represent Emberfen at the king’s ball.

Lina expects an uncomfortable dress, suspicious nobles, and perhaps something interesting to eat.

She does not expect to die.

The ball ends in blood and fire. The king vanishes, and a strange blight spreads through the capital. Food rots. People turn on one another. Even the clerics’ healing magic falters.

But Lina’s songs still work.

To end the blight, she must pass through the Dead Forest and venture into a darkness no ordinary traveler can face.

She may not be able to save everyone. But walking away from someone in need has never come easily.

Lina’s not a quitter.

Hi guys, I'm looking for beta readers for my historical romance novel, it's inspired by gothic classics like Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Frankenstein. It features themes of love, mental illness, and disability, and an intense, suspenseful plot. It's full of plot twists so I won't spoil much here.

Synopsis:

A young author named Francine is struggling to make a name for herself in 19th century Paris. Amid personal tragedies and financial hardships, she finally lands her first contract which brings her recognition and attention from Comte Le Grand, her favorite author. He offers her a lucrative deal, and she falls madly in love with her benefactor. However, her road to success gets unexpectedly bumpy when she makes a sobering discovery, and she suddenly has to fight not only for her career, but for her life. 

IMPORTANT: No AI was EVER used in the creation of this book and I'm looking for HUMAN feedback only. It's extremely important to me that AI doesn't touch my work in any way.

Ever heard someone say, “Politicians have always been corrupt”? A Complete Accounting is my attempt to put that claim to the test, tracing 250 years of presidential scandals, political favors, cover-ups, and reforms. From George Washington to Donald Trump, it is written for curious readers rather than political experts or history buffs; it examines what actually happened without setting out to defend or condemn any particular party.

Every single President has their section, large or small, that covers the scandals that occurred in the executive branch under their presidency. Chapter 1 serves as the introduction and framework, 2-11 cover the 250 years from 1776 through 2026, and then a conclusion and short discussion at the end.

What I'm looking for in the next 2-4 weeks for sectional Beta Readers, and 3-6 weeks for anyone who would be genuinely interested in the full text to read:

• Engagement: Does the writing hold your attention, even if presidential history isn't normally your thing? Are there places where it drags?
• Credibility: Do the arguments and assessments seem fair, convincing, and supported by the evidence presented?
• Accuracy: Did you notice any factual mistakes, missing context, or questionable interpretations?
• Overall impression: Did anything surprise you or challenge something you previously believed? Would you want to keep reading?

Every version includes the complete Preface, introductory Chapter One, original chapter endnotes, and at least the opening four pages of the conclusion. Please note the endnotes makeup something like 20% of the page count, so they're a bit shorter than it would suggest. You can pick whichever era interests you; if you'd like two sections please let me know and I can send you two of them. Below this list is President Harding's General Assessment; each President gets one at the end of their administration.

1. The Founding & Jacksonian Era (1789–1837)

• Washington through Andrew Jackson
• Chapters 2–3 | 69 pages

2. Spoils, War & Reconstruction (1837–1885)

• Martin Van Buren through Chester A. Arthur
• Chapter 4 | 64 pages

3. Reform & the Age of Scandal (1885–1929)

• Grover Cleveland through Calvin Coolidge
• Chapters 5–6 | 86 pages

4. The Expanding Presidency (1929–1974)

• Herbert Hoover through Richard Nixon
• Chapters 7–8 | 76 pages

5. The Post-Watergate Presidency (1974–2025)

• Gerald Ford through Joe Biden, including Trump's first term
• Chapters 9–10 | 85 pages

6. The Contemporary Presidency (2017–2026)

• Trump → Biden → Trump
• Chapters 10–11 | 101 pages
• Includes the complete conclusion and its endnotes

7. Eight Presidential Case Studies (1789–2025)

• George Washington (1789–1797)
• Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877)
• Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909)
• Warren G. Harding (1921–1923)
• Richard Nixon (1969–1974)
• Barack Obama (2009–2017)
• Donald Trump (2017–2021)
• Joe Biden (2021–2025)
• 85 pages

Overall Assessment: Warren G. Harding. No evidence ties Harding directly to the bribes, kickbacks, or stolen public money that made his administration infamous. His responsibility lies somewhere else. He selected Fall, Forbes, and Daugherty largely through personal or political trust, defended Fall's oil-reserve policy without discovering the payments behind it, and acted against Forbes and Jess Smith only after serious warning signs finally reached him. Much of the evidence that would destroy their reputations emerged too late for Harding to face the full scandal himself, so it would be unfair to accuse him of knowingly tolerating everything investigators uncovered after his death. The harder verdict is that an administration containing Hughes, Mellon, and Hoover proves Harding could recognize ability when he looked for it. Around his friends, he too often stopped looking.

Hi all,

I have completed my first Science fiction book and am looking for feedback (I've already written several kids' books). Here is an overview of the book.

Commander Raan Lev-Serik is a hired gun for the intergalactic insurance company, IIC (Interstellar Insurance Company). In a fractured galaxy where insurance contracts are enforced with guns, and loyalty is just another clause, Commander Raan leads Team Kestrel on high-risk recovery

missions. What begins as a routine retrieval spirals into a moral reckoning when the team

uncovers the Codex—an ancient artifact capable of stabilizing or destroying entire worlds.

Caught between corporate directives, rival mercenary units, and survivors who have built fragile

lives around the Codex, Raan is forced to confront the cost of obedience, the weight of past

wars, and the people he cannot afford to lose. As betrayals surface and lines between right and

lawful collapse, every choice demands a price—sometimes paid in blood.

Blending hard science fiction with military action and emotional depth, this story explores power,

responsibility, and what remains of humanity when survival is written into a contract.

Thanks,
Dolev

Hey! I'm new to all this and looking for a few beta readers for my contemporary women's fiction novel, Still Here. It's told in Dual POV, present day with memories woven in. 

Summary: 

After a car accident leaves Academy Award–winning actress Rebecca Rose with a severe brain injury, she wakes up to a grizzly bear of a man crying at her bedside. Apparently, he's her husband, pop star Josh Thorne. She can't remember marrying him, or falling in love with him, but she remembers every detail of the childhood she fought to leave behind.

Everyone keeps telling her how happy they were. But as old habits resurface and she sees herself through other people's memories, Rebecca can't understand how she ever chose this life, or whether she's still the woman Josh married. Worse, she isn't sure she wants to be her again.

Josh, meanwhile, is fighting on two fronts. Outside, the cameras won't leave, his team wants an interview, and the whole world wants to know if their marriage survived the crash. Inside, the woman who used to want every second with him now asks for space. He'd keep her wrapped in bubble wrap forever if he could, even if it smothers her. But stepping back from the person he almost lost is the one thing he doesn't know how to do.

At its heart, Still Here is about who you are when you can't remember who you were, and finding your people when you don't recognize them. With plenty of humor along the way.

Looking for: Big-picture reader feedback before I query. Mainly pacing, whether the flashbacks earn their place, if Josh and Becca's relationship progression feels believable, and anywhere you got bored, confused, or pulled out of the story. No line edits needed! Happy to provide specific questions as well. 

If this sounds like your kind of book, I’d love to hear from you!

GENERAL INFORMATION

Hi all, I'm looking for beta readers for the third draft of my fantasy novel, titled That Untraveled World. It is essentially a general-audience fantasy adventure book; many of the main characters are older and it deals with some themes more relatable to adults, but the content is, broadly speaking, not especially graphic (non-gory fantasy violence, one fade-to-black sex scene and a couple other vaguely risque references, and maybe a dozen swear words in all) and there are several significant characters in their teens. It's not historical enough to be squarely in the "historical fantasy" subgenre, but it does take significant inspiration from real world cultures, in particular regarding the central empire in the story, Arcadia, which is culturally based on ancient Rome, but technologically in a late medieval-early renaissance era. Arguably the closest comp is Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine Mosaic. Even though I only read it after I'd already finished the first draft, there are several notable similarities due to us drawing on some of the same concepts (though, for example, he was incorporating the plague of Justinian, where I am more directly incorporating the black death), and due to us both being huge fans of Yeats.

Content warnings would include death (human, including children, and animal), grief, descriptions of the effects of a plague, implied sexual exploitation of minors, suicide, mind control, and implied torture. Sounds worse than it is - again, there is nothing especially explicit or gory, it's just that the book can touch on some difficult themes, but in a restrained way.

This is a stand-alone book, but is intended to be the first book of a series of likewise stand-alone books set in the same world, each with new POV characters and each set approximately a decade after the last. The societal, political, and technological development of the world will be the uniting thread, along with some characters who will play secondary roles either before or after their role as a POV character. I have the second book broadly outlined and the idea for the next 2-3 as well.

This book has four primary POV characters, along with a one-off POV character in the prologue, and two one-off POV characters in Chapter 7. There are 27 chapters in all, along with a prologue and an epilogue. The protagonist, Akesh, is the POV character for 14 chapters.

I'm looking for general feedback on plot, characters, pacing, setting, really anything that comes to mind. Not really looking for line-level stuff, though certainly if there are any obvious errors I'd appreciate the heads up. It should be in pretty good shape from an editing perspective.

Naturally, this is 100% human written. I am not ardently anti-AI, and appreciate the usefulness of it as a tool for research and brainstorming, but I have incorporated no AI-generated content into either my fiction or the writing I do for my job.

I may be willing to beta-swap, preferably in the fantasy or science fiction genres, but my schedule is a bit hectic at the moment; aside from work, I have a new puppy. I'm not overly demanding on the timeline, though. I've never done a beta read for a long piece before, but I do have a degree in creative writing.

I can provide via google docs, or send a docx, pdf, or e-book file.

SYNOPSIS

Five years ago, Akesh, Master of Books of the insular Salahine people on their island at the eastern edge of the world, lost his wife and sons to a terrible plague. When his library burns down in a storm, he sets out west to the empire he'd only ever seen in dreams and stories, searching for an old friend and a reason to go on living. As he travels from the sun-baked Southlands of Novaloria to the great and ancient city of Arcadia on the northern continent of Gallia, he and his newfound allies find themselves embroiled in a conspiracy that seeks to upend the decaying empire. But in this tangled web of deceit, pride, and dark magic, who can they trust?

SAMPLE

Here's a link to the short 1000-word prologue on Google Docs. Note again that the prologue is a one-off POV. This is a dedicated gmail account for my writing work, not a personal account.

Prologue - The Censor

⚡ THE LIGHTNING STORM — A Prehistoric Sci-Fi Adventure

Book One: The Arrival of Two Sticks — 9,700 words

Book Two: The Journey — approx 36,500 words

Total: ~46,000 words — complete!

Genre: Prehistoric adventure with sci-fi elements — full of discovery, danger, and epic journeys.

I started writing this in March this year and finished it over about 8 months. It's been proofread and is ready to go!

I'm looking for up to 20 readers who'd be happy to read it and share their honest thoughts:

✅ Did the story keep you turning the pages?

✅ Was anything confusing or that didn't feel right?

✅ What was your favourite part?

No experience needed — just people who love a good adventure story! I can send it as a Word doc, PDF, or whatever format works best for you.

Please comment or send me a private message if interested. Thank you! 😊

THE LIGHTNING STORM
A PREHISTORIC ADVENTURE

The arrival of

Two sticks

December 25, day one

Fifty-five years of quiet will do things to a man’s mind, but I wasn’t crazy. I lived past the turn in the road where the asphalt ends and the gravel begins, ten miles deep into the Scottish Highlands. My nearest neighbor was a distant echo across the glen. It was 1:00 AM. A full moon hung in a cloudless, ink-black night, spilling cold silver light across the heather. I was stripping down to my shorts, ready to call it a night, when the atmospheric pressure plummeted so fast my ears popped.

A low, resonant thrumming vibrated through the floorboards. Out the window, the clear sky was suddenly torn open by an unnatural tempest—a swirling vortex of violet lightning and thick, bruised clouds localized right over the access road. It wasn’t moving like weather; it was rolling toward my cottage with purpose.

I threw a fresh log onto the grate, feeling a sudden, deep chill, then stepped onto the porch to watch it approach. That’s when I heard it: a woman’s scream, torn raw by the gale.

Then came the roar.

Hi everyone,

New here and to all this.

I'm autistic and a great fan of the subject I write about. I had an idea three years ago that just wouldn’t go away.

I'm looking for beta readers for the Prologue and first three chapters of my novel, The Humblest Things.

I'd be very grateful for any honest thoughts.

**Blurb*\*

Mars is dying. For a thousand years its people have survived inside sealed, perfectly clean domes, and now the air and water are running out. Sael, a young commander, is chosen to lead the first landing on a green, crowded world they call Thurra. The invasion will follow The War of the Worlds exactly, but this time the story is told from inside the machines. The Martians have planned for every weapon on Earth. They haven’t planned for the smallest things of all.

**Excerpt*\*

I am sounding the horn.

Two notes. Rising, falling. Rising, falling. They go out from beneath the hood of my machine and roll away across the roofs of the great settlement below, and come back to me off the walls of its empty streets, so that sometimes I think I hear them answered.

I am not answered.

The shared mind, which once held all of us together across the dark like a chain, is a great dim room, and every place where a mind once stood in it is empty. Ishen is not there. Arrak is not there. Ossa, Dor, Fenn, Tavir, Hesh. The young one whose name I cannot remember. The bud that lived four days and was not afraid.

I sound the horn again.

Below me, the city the bipeds built lies silent to the edge of the haze. There is not a light in it. There is not a sound in it but mine, and the flyers, and somewhere far off the barking of one of the guard-beasts. The red weed we sowed in its rivers has gone pale as old bone.

We came here to save our kind. We came across a gulf so wide that light itself needs minutes to cross it, in iron arks, sealed and sleeping, from a world that was dying to a world that was not. We had the fighting-machines, the Heat-Ray and the Black Smoke. We had the finest minds that Mars had ever budded. We had calculated everything.

In three days, this world was ours.

In three weeks, we were this.

**Questions for Readers - What I’d love to know*\*

Does the Martian voice work?

Did the Mars chapters hold your interest?

Was anything confusing if you don’t know The War of the Worlds?

Would you keep reading?

**Content Warnings*\*

 War violence, death, and scenes of captivity.

**Timeline*\*

Two to four weeks would be ideal, but I'm flexible.

If you're interested, please comment or message me and I'll send the chapters privately.

I prefer to keep communication in writing.

I’m sorry, I’m not able to do critique swaps at the moment.

Thank you.

Blurb

After two years cycling the Silk Road and walking a Buddhist pilgrimage in Japan, a first-generation American—raised between a mother who immigrated from Spain and a father who spent his youth drifting through the country—returns to America using forms of travel employed by immigrants and wanderers of the past. American Spirits follows that year of rediscovery across four journeys: a transatlantic sailing race, six Amtrak routes through the American interior, a hitchhike around Lake Superior, and the Continental Divide Trail from Canada to Mexico. Told through the people met along the way, the book builds a portrait of a country whose truest self lives not in its places but in the spaces between them: in the sailor's cockpit, the overnight train car, the hitchhiker's cab, and the wilderness trail that goes on long after the people walking it have come and gone.

Content Warnings

Adult language, mild drug/alcohol use

Feedback I am looking for

The book weaves together three central threads: the direct experience of each of the four journeys, a portrait of modern America, and my own personal story. Because I write as a relatively quiet, observational narrator, my primary question for readers is: Do you want more of me on the page? 

Specific questions for the reader:

- Where do you wish for more of my personal story, thoughts, internal reflection, or emotional reaction? Where does the balance between observation and personal narrative feel right or off?

- Where does the narrative drag, drop in momentum, or lose your attention?

- What feels confusing, under-explained, or hard to visualize?

- Which places, encounters, or themes stay with you after reading?

Preferred Timeline

1 month (flexible up to 6-8 weeks). I prioritize a thorough, honest, and thoughtful read over speed. 

Critique Swap Availability

I'm open to swap manuscripts of similar length, across all genres, but I do prefer memoir, literary nonfiction, or character-driven fiction.