I fell out with 50-20 over cocky gate when they sided with Failenena because she was a personal friend of one of their admins... that aside its not a bad group but i prefer mark Dawson's SPF Community and Adam Croft's Indie Author Mindset group (full disclosure i'm a moderator on the latter)
In terms of beta readers I've got my best beta readers here by being part of the community (noting that our collaboration forum requires 14 days membership and 20 posts. plus meeting the workshop requirements)... if you are happy to beta for people they'll generally return the favour (there are also FB groups specifically for beta exchanges) That aside if beta readers are giving up after 2-3 chapters that generally says that something pretty radical is wrong either with the book or with where you are getting Betas from However if you don't want or can't get betas the better option is a decent editor... which for a book this length will cost around £1k
Oops - sorry about the group name. I've gone and corrected it now! Although re the OP, if betas are giving up after 2-3 chapters, and judging from Xoic's post about the OP's look inside content, it sounds like the problem isn't in how he's marketing the book. The horrible truth is, sometimes we think we're ready but our work still has a long way to go. Unfortunately hard work doesn't always mean good work. However, with a growth mindset, even this could be overcome. Anything can be learnt - it just takes people different lengths of time So, if it's writing quality, I'd suggest OP gets an editor or signs up for some writing course, and use the Workshop area for critiques. Without feedback, you won't improve.
Thanks for the encouragement but I've sunk too much time and money that I'm just tired. I wrote the books way back in 2017 to pass time and have fun. Never I thought this whole self-publishing thing turned into a nightmare. The sunk cost fallacy thing is real.
Self publishing is like any other business ... you have to invest time and money in starting out and you don't make it back immediately. The key is to spend the money where it makes a difference to sales (in a genre appropriate cover, decent structural editing, proof reading, and marketing of whatever nature. If you invest in those things and don't make any sales then yes spending more is probably throwing good money after bad But if you didn't invest in creating a quality product in the first place, then spending that money now (for example on decent editing and a genre appropriate cover) absolutely makes sense
Publishing isn't "if you write it, they will come" deal. Advertising and publicity - especially word of mouth - matters more than your actual writing, because it gets the word out that there's something for people to read. It seems like the quality is just not there, though. I've only read the comments here, and for you to say one beta had to be bribed, and others couldn't finish it, maybe the problem is in the actual writing. And don't cry about it, FFS, keep writing and develop the quality of your work. Move on to the next work. Just because you write, nobody has any obligation to you to read it. Make people so interested in your story and characters that they can't wait to get to the next page. THAT's the best advertising you can get, but it does seem like your work is not there yet.
You make it sound like 2017 was decades ago. That's only four years. Recently I unearthed a "short story" that I wrote in 2004. I dredged it up with the intention of entering it in a short story contest. The upper limit for the contest was 5,000 words. When I opened my story in Word to check the word count, it was 49,000 words! I was -- quite honestly -- shocked to learn that I had written a novella (or novelette, depending on who you ask) instead of a short story. I couldn't enter it in the contest, obviously, so I did a quick edit and uploaded it to Kindle. I have a book that has been percolating on the back burner of what's left of my brain for at least fifteen or twenty years. One of these days I may actually get around to finishing it.
