Do you need the opinion of someone who isn’t your mom? (We love you, Mom.) We’ve got you covered. Choose from our wide range of readers and get a feel for how audiences will like your book!
This is a great edit to purchase for testing out your market. Did you hit the expected tropes? Are your characters reading right? Just ask our beta readers.
Beta reader edits include a full page of reader responses and thoughts. In-line edits can be purchased as an add-on.
If you have questions about our process or one of our editors, please email us at hello@saltandsagebooks.com!
Meet our Beta Readers
Kim VanderHorst
Kim is an experienced and kind developmental editor—maybe because she’s a mom, or maybe because she’s Canadian. But she has a knack
Heba Elsherief
Heba Elsherief holds an MA in English Literature and a PhD in Language and Literacies from the University of Toronto. A former Islamic high school English teacher, she now teaches university classes in cultural studies and language education.
Akelah Adams
From a young age, Akelah has always had a passion for reading. She loves the different characters and worlds that she could discover when she read and she knew she wanted to work with authors and writers to put their work out there. She graduated with a B.
Trinica Sampson
Trinica is currently on hiatus.
Trinica Sampson is a writer and freelance editor with experience as an Editorial Assistant at Utne Reader and The Antioch Review. She loves working with writers to make their novel, comic, video game dialogue, poetry, or personal essay the best version of itself that it can be.
Thais Carreira Afonso
Thais is a neurodivergent, Brazilian lesbian. She currently lives in Rio and works as editor in the education industry. She has been working as a professional editor for almost five years, and before that, she was already a beta reader for various friends’ fanfiction. Currently, she helps fellow authors polish their work as a critique partner and beta reader.
Taye Timko
Taye Timko is a Jack and Jill of all Trades and the Master of Some—primarily an educator of color at an African centered high school on the East Coast, teaching (sometimes) reluctant young writers by day and is a writer and freelance editor by night.
Lee Anne Cooksey
Lee Anne Cooksey has worked for a local government agency for 30 years. She currently supervises four (4) team members who are responsible for procuring
Erin Olds
Erin’s officially been writing for over half of her life, and has the stacks of scribbled-in notebooks to prove it! She can help you with anything from story structure to emotional payoffs.
Candice Roma
Candice has dedicated her life to words. Initially she had dreams of going to medical school, but when she was faced with the choice of Inorganic Chemistry or taking a Creative Writing class, she ran screaming from the science lab and into the amazing world of creative fiction.
Justin Ho
Justin Ho is a writer who grew up in Hawaii but spent most of his time in online worlds. Now a bit more grounded, he’s currently pursuing traditional publishing, keeping up with YA releases, and learning Korean (code for watching too much TOMORROW X TOGETHER and BTS content).
David Pena
Born and raised in Madrid, Spain, David is an editor and writer with a background in Psychology who loves books as much as he loves people. You can find him behind his laptop and second coffee or walking around his hometown buying more and more books, always ready to listen and trade stories.
Savannah Tenderfoot
Savannah Tenderfoot is a seasonal park ranger who would always choose a day in the woods or at the beach over being indoors. When she isn’t reading, you can find her gardening, cooking, kayaking, beading, relaxing near the river with a book of brain-teasers… the list goes on.
Heidi Robbins
Heidi Robbins has a Masters in Education with an emphasis in library media, with additional degrees in Theater and Speech Education with a minor in English!
Lynn Brown
Lynn is currently on hiatus and is not accepting any edits at this time.
Lynn Brown wrote her first book at the age of 6, (a fantasy!) to the wild acclaim of her kindergarten class. She’s been helping other writers get their words out into the world ever since.
Nicholas Dante di Angelo
A wild child of the chaotic arts, Nicholas Dante di Angelo is a creative soul with a proclivity for colorful, vivid imagery in his artwork and writing. He enjoys bold, brilliant splashes of color in everything and anything. When not nose-deep in a book, he can be found playing video games and writing critical analyses on the pop culture/media he consumes.
Catherine Liao
Catherine is a historical and literary fiction writer who has been lost in books since they could hold them. Aside from writing, they’re also working towards a degree in archaeology. You could say they’re always looking to dig up the next great find—in both books and their career.
Madison Parrotta
From an early age, Madison Parrotta was paranoid that she’d never be able to read. When she was proven wrong, she devoured as many books as she could. As Madison grew older and continued to read, she noticed the lack of people like herself (i.e. that were disabled). At this point, she knew she wanted to work with books that were written by disabled writers or were about disability in a way that dismantled ableism.
Ronkwahrhakónha D ("Lune")
Ronkwahrhakónha (Loon-gwah-lah-goon-ha), or Lune for short, was raised in two storytelling cultures. Whether it was the indigenous stories their father told them at bedtime, or ones from the Torah that they heard in school or synagogue, Ronkwahrhakónha has always been enchanted by the power of stories. By age 19, they were performing on stage as an improvisational actor and traditional Native storyteller.
Tova Seltzer
Tova Seltzer is an editor, fiction writer, and poet. She holds a B.A. in creative writing from American University in Washington, D.C., and is a 2020 graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course. The great love of her life is working with stories in development and figuring out what they want and need to be the greatest they can be.
Carrie Jacks
Carrie loves the entire process of publishing a novel—from developing that brand new, exciting idea to formatting the words to look perfect on the page.She is sometimes intimidated by editing her own words, but she loves to read other writers’ works in progress to help make them the best they can be.
Basil
Basil is a writer and sensitivity reader who has primarily worked with TTRPG writers to ensure their games are inclusive and welcoming to all. They love D&D, anime, and otome games. If you had to match Basil to a magical girl team, they would be the energetic yellow magic girl that always supports her friends and is constantly snacking on something.