Reproduced from Coffee Time Romance with Amy's Permission. A "beta reader" is someone who reads your book cover-to-cover the way a normal reader would, and gives you feedback from the perspective of the reader's experience. The difference between a beta reader and a critique partner is basically:A beta reader reads your ENTIRE manuscript--and usually only reads it once. Your goal is to have fresh eyes that have never read any parts of it before. You're looking for how the story hangs together and works for a real reader. A critique partner usually only reads a few chapters at a time and is usually (but not always) another writer. So they are more inclined to give you more indepth, writer advice versus "this just didn't work for me and I don't know why" which is what you would get from a beta reader. A critique partner may also read the same chapters several times.Most critique partners will not read the entire manuscript end-to-end, so they may n...