See exactly how your beta readers read

You can share your manuscript with beta readers in a few clicks, straight from Writer Studio or your authr.app dashboard. Readers open the draft in a browser — nothing to install, no account required — behind whichever access control you pick: a private link, a password, or an email invite. What comes back is real feedback and real reading analytics, so you learn not just what readers thought, but where they actually stopped reading.

How do you share a draft with beta readers?

Publish a whole book or a single chapter as a shared draft, and it goes out as a snapshot — an atomic revision, so no reader ever lands on a half-updated page mid-edit even if you're still typing the next scene. When you have new pages ready, you re-publish to push the update; readers always see one consistent draft at a time, never a partial one. There's no app for readers to download and nothing to configure on their end: the draft opens in any browser, and the access mode you set — link, password, or invite — decides who can get in. Start (or stop) sharing from Writer Studio or your dashboard, whichever you have open. See the share settings for the full walkthrough.

What feedback can beta readers leave?

Reader feedback is opt-in per book, off by default — you decide when a draft is ready to hear from readers, and you can turn it back off just as easily. Once it's on, readers can leave a comment on a whole chapter or drop an inline comment on a specific paragraph, plus a quick reaction: Loved, Confusing, Slow, Want more, or Typo — faster than writing a note for every small reaction to a scene. Each reader gets a "My Feedback" panel to review what they've said, add a follow-up, or retract a comment they change their mind about. On your side, feedback isn't a discussion thread — there's no reply chain back to the reader — you read, filter, resolve, and reopen items from the dashboard, individually or in batches, so a big beta round doesn't turn into an inbox to manage.

What reading analytics do you get?

Every shared draft tracks real reading behavior, not just whether the link was opened: total views, unique readers, and average completion for the whole draft. Drill into a single chapter and you get its views, completion rate, average reader progress, and time-on-chapter, plus where readers drop off between chapters — the clearest signal that a scene is dragging or an ending needs work. A progress-distribution histogram shows whether readers are clustered near the end or trailing off early, and you can check any individual reader's progress on its own to see how far a specific person got. None of this needs readers to leave feedback — it's tracked from reading alone, so even a silent beta round tells you something.

Who can see your draft, and can you revoke access?

Three access modes cover most beta-reading setups:

Access mode	Who can open it	Good for
Public link	Anyone with the URL (unlisted — not a public catalog)	A small circle you trust with the link itself
Password	Anyone with the URL and the password	Sharing more widely without emailing everyone individually
Invite by email	Only the specific readers you invite	A closed beta round with a known reader list

Revoking a draft hard-purges the content from the server immediately — the link stops working the moment you do it. Feedback your readers already left stays in your dashboard, so you keep the notes even after the draft is gone.

Once you've folded the notes in, export the finished manuscript in the format your next step needs, and use version history to keep every draft you shared along the way. Beta-reading in Writer Studio never asks for more than the feedback itself — no public listing, no marketplace, just a private link back to your readers. Download Writer Studio and share your next draft.