Beta and Sensitivity Readers (Oh, My!)

A Literal Literary Loser Bucks the Trend

My 18th book, “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region” came out November 15, 2022. Almost a month after publication, it’s still the #1 ranked title in Amazon’s Historical Russian Fiction New Releases.

I didn’t use a Beta reader for this manuscript. I simply wrote it, then sent it out to publishers. The only (minor) changes were made by its eventual History Through Fiction editor.

I used Beta readers early in my career. They were fellow aspiring authors. We’d trade manuscripts and critique each other’s work. But the problem with that approach was that few of us ever agreed on what did and didn’t work in a story. Worse, none of us knew what we were doing.

We were all aspiring, none of us had been published at that point, so how could we judge? It was a case of the blind leading the blind.

That experience lead to me dropping the Beta reader concept, and writing my most divisive post to date: Never Take Advice From Someone Who Isn’t Paying You. Some of my readers… didn’t appreciate it.

Sensitivity readers are another story. The idea behind sensitivity readers is that they preview your manuscript and flag any potentially offensive portrayals of characters outside your strictly defined (not sure by whom) racial, ethnic, religious, gender, sexual orientation, etc… categories.

My July 2020 novel, “The Nesting Dolls,” followed three generations of a Soviet-Jewish family from Odessa, USSR in the 1930s and 1970s, until their eventual immigration to present day Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. In the third section, the youngest family member strikes up a friendship and tentative romance with an African-American man.

Two of the comments I received on the manuscript prior to its purchase by HarperCollins was:

“You don’t understand how immigrant families work.” (I was born in Odessa, USSR and immigrated to the US with my parents in 1977.)

“You don’t understand how interracial relationships work.” (My African-American husband and I will celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary this January.)

When I shared the above feedback with my cousin, she said, “I laughed so hard on the first one, I didn’t have anything left for the second.”

My current project (in addition to tirelessly promoting “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region” - always be promoting!), is “Go On Pretending,” a biweekly serial for the website, SoapHub, set in the early days of radio and television soap-operas. It’s a serial about serials, a soap-opera about soap-operas, hosted by a soap-opera site. Do you get it???

My heroine is an (American-born) Jewish soap-opera writer involved in a clandestine relationship with an over-educated, incredibly articulate African-American man. My children have repeatedly voiced their awe at my incredible creativity. (As my oldest said about the love interest in “The Nesting Dolls,” “Dad grew up in Harlem, went to private school and then to MIT. Gideon grew up in Harlem, went to private school, and then to CalTech. How could anyone think they were in any way the same?”)

Now, I have never been an African-American man in the 1950s. (To be fair, I’ve never been an American-born Jewish female soap-opera writer in the 1950s, either. Just how closely are the bios supposed to match?) This dichotomy would presumably call for the services of a sensitivity reader.

But I’m not going to get one. Why? Because, as I’ve said about beta readers, they rarely agree. For instance, when it came to “The Nesting Dolls,” some critics called me out for having my characters say things that supposedly real-life people like them would never say - even though they were direct quotes from… real-life people.

You can’t please all of the aforementioned people all of the time. You can’t even please some of the people some of the time. I’ve long ago given up trying.

You know whom I want to please? My husband. You know whom I don’t want to offend with a clunky characterization? My husband.

So who is the only sensitivity reader I am going to listen to? My husband.

If he’s OK with the African-American leading man in “Go On Pretending,” (who, for the record, refers to himself as the historically appropriate “Negro,” just like my husband’s grandmother insisted on), then I’m OK with it.

And, so far, he likes it. Then again, I cannot wait to hear what the rest of you think….