Any ideas on finding beta readers?

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Hi Mark,

I've moved this to the appropriate folder and updated the title. Please let me know if you have any questions about writing-related threads.

[Tomas]

My experience is mixed. I had one or two really good readers here on GR but that was someone who saw one of my posts that was not directly about asking for betas but about my preferences in general, leading to discussion about mutual interests and only then to beta reading.

I've used the betareader.io site where the feedback I got was decent, but unless you find someone in the first few days after listing your MS, you're out of luck doe to lack of visibility. And even there, I found people who applied (or accepted my invite) but did not go further than the prologue (and I had to boot them because there's a limit on simultaneous active betas).

The most success I had was, coincidentally, from my blog - by going for beta swaps with people where we follow each other's blogs and thus had some decent idea whether or not our tastes were close enough.

In any situation, being willing to swap increases your chances.

In either way, the issue with finding betas (let alone good ones) is same as with eventually selling your book: there's a lot of writers but not nearly enough beta readers because beta reading (especially in detail) takes a lot of time (beta reading my ~180k story usually took 2-3 months, sometimes more).
That's not to mention that a person can get into a 'beta fatigue' - it just happened to me after 6 months of continuous (and sometimes overlapping) swaps that I just can't take the idea of another beta read/swap in the next few months.

[Quantum]

Mark wrote: "Does anyone know a good source for free Beta Readers. (On Goodreads, or elsewhere) I'm struggling to find quality, experienced, polite, readers.

I'm open to suggestions. Please help. Thank you all..."

I understand that you're looking for beta readers, but depending on where you are in your publishing cycle, you might consider writer critique groups. I've had excellent success with local in-person writer critique groups. A friend of mine started one about three years ago at our local library in the San Francisco Bay Area. A couple of years ago, a writer in that group told me about the East Bay Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers meetup (meetup.com) and the writers (~10-20) in that group give excellent feedback. I also joined my local chapter of the California Writers Club, which also has a writers critique group (~6 writers).