Hi everyone,
Thank you for being here and for agreeing to take part in this closed alpha reading of Comedy, or The Faustine Parable. It means a lot.
Below you’ll find a guide on how to participate and access the novel. Please read it before diving in.
What is Alfa Reading?
You may have heard of beta reading: that’s when a manuscript has already been through the hands of a publishing house’s editorial team, and you send the polished result out to people who read for a living, hoping their reviews will inspire your editor to finance a good marketing campaign. Alpha reading is something different. It happens before you’ve even sent your manuscript to a literary agent, and its purpose is to gather (wishfully!) some sound feedback to incorporate into the final draft you’ll eventually submit.
Which is to say: this manuscript is rough around the edges, and a jagged reading experience is more or less guaranteed. Your job is to flag the moments where the roughness crosses a threshold, where it stops being texture and starts drawing blood, so to speak, so that future readers won’t have to suffer quite as much. Good luck.
Submitting feedback
When you’re done reading, you can submit your thoughts through the feedback pages linked below (there are short surveys to guide you). That said, what I value most is a real conversation, so if we can find the time to just talk about your experience, I’d love that more than any form.
While reading, I’d encourage you to highlight passages you particularly like, and to note or comment on anything that didn’t work for you: a scene that lost you, a line that felt off, a moment where you put the book down. The things I’m most curious about are: your overall impression of the story; whether the pacing felt right, or if there are parts that dragged or felt rushed; what you made of the characters, who you liked, who you didn’t, and what you thought of the protagonist specifically; and which part of the book held your attention most, and why. Themes are worth reflecting on too, though I’m less interested in whether you decoded them and more in whether they landed.
How to Read
You can download the book here. Depending on what device you’re reading on, there are a few different ways to get the book onto your device.
- Phone or tablet. Download the EPUB file and open it. On iPhone, it will open automatically in Apple Books; on Android, it will open in Google Books. From there you can read it like any other e-book.
- Kindle. Use Amazon’s Send to Kindle: upload the EPUB file to the website, select your device, and the book will be delivered to your Kindle wirelessly within a while.
- Other e-readers. If you use a different e-reader, you should be able to plug it into your computer via USB and drag the EPUB file directly into your books folder.
- Print. There is a printable PDF version available, for those so inclined. If you use A4 sheets, you can horizontally print two pages per side, four book pages per physical sheet, which should keep the whole thing from becoming unwieldy.