I'm a beta reader. I come cheap - free! Beta readers come from your known and trusted contacts only. These are people (authors included) you have interacted with on various projects previously (ie - you need to help them BEFORE you request help). These are intimate people . . . not random acquaintances. Beta readers are a serious aspect of your career - get a good one and you can ride the wave, get a bad one and you're like a beached whale. Never, EVER, offer money or any incentive to a beta reader. Never respond to a beta reader's response unless specifically asked to. There is a standard list of things a beta reader is looking for (research beta readers expectation on Google and do your due diligence). If you manage to get a loyal beta reader . . . you got some gold - they are hard to come by. Good luck! Edited to add: A work has to be spit-shined and polished before going to beta read . . . this is NOT trading drafts. Most beta readers will want to know the name of the editor in order to send a courtesy copy of their beta read . . . it's that serious. Don't request a beta read until the work is ready for publication as the beta readers will be your first Reviewers on Kindle etc. BE VERY CAREFUL requesting beta readers - make sure you've been one, make sure you have the contacts, make sure your work has been edited to the max and is ready for publication, make sure you can handle/reply to positive and negative remarks.
What's the "courtesy copy of their beta read" to the editor bit about? Are you saying the beta would contact the editor directly and forward his/her notes? That seems to be crossing a line to me... a good, important line! Betas are (or at least, good, well-matched betas are) valuable, but they're just a preliminary stage in getting a book ready for publication. And there should be several of them per book, and in my experience their feedback is often, at least in some areas, conflicting. Expecting a professional editor to read a bunch of conflicting notes from amateurs about a manuscript draft that isn't even the draft in front of them... I wouldn't be down with that. Not at all. But maybe you meant something else. Can you clarify?
When I finished my most recent project, I felt I had something that had the potential to be published and I actively recruited about a dozen beta readers. Most of them were members here, but some were not. Every person I approached was someone I felt would be able to give me constructive criticism. All of them accepted. Only two of them read the ms in its entirety, and the comments I got from them were extremely helpful. Three others read it in part and then told me they could not finish because of time constraints. One of those gave me comments that were actually extremely helpful, while another gave me comments that were completely worthless (because they were based on an ideological disagreement with something I'd written rather than something that was either fact-based or craft-based). A dear friend of mine on this board suggested to me that my mistake lay in recruiting beta readers. She suggested that if I had just mentioned casually to friends and acquaintances that I had completed a work of fiction, those who would naturally make good beta readers would come to me and ask to read it. While that would not have worked for my last project - a historical novel about Cuba, in which I needed feedback on specific aspects of the story - I think that is probably a good idea for anything else. In fact, even if you need feedback from someone with a particular knowledge base, I think this general approach can be helpful.
