Beta Wanted for Cozy Mystery, willing to trade!!

So with four posts here under your belt, you hope to find someone willing to do a line-by-line critique?

I'm not a nasty person, I swear I'm not, but that's asking for a lot, having given nothing.

There are, of course, people here who are generous with their time and expertise, but a best course of action might well be to become a part of this community. Once your are, the pool from which your beta readers come is not defined by selfless generosity.

A lot of the people who could really be of assistance are simply not going to give someone they don't know that much of their time. We've been burned too many times by someone who asked for a huge favor, promising to give it back or pay it forward, received what they wanted, and disappeared without so much as a thank you.

Maryn, sure you don't want to be one of those

Specval said:

My concerns for the book are story flow, advanced grammer, and if I should end it where I have or continue on. Ideally I'm looking for a beta to critique my work line by line and if they think I should continue on with the story, some ideas would be greatly appreciated. I would like a very detailed and constructive critique. If you're the type to just say "This part sucks." as opposed to "This part sucks, you should consider doing XYZ." We might not get along....

I would love to Beta a book in return. I've never done it but I have no problem being honest and with a little guidance I'm sure I can give you exactly what you're looking for.

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Specval, I'm going to echo the other posters' advice. Share Your Work is a great place to get to know people and to become known. But, more importantly, I think that you'd probably find it really useful to write some critiques so that you have an idea of what it entails. It's terrific you're offering to beta-read a book in return, but if you've never done it you may not be aware of what you're committing to!

Of course, some people are very fast at reading and critiquing, and if you're one of them it'll be a piece of cake. Hopefully you're not like me: slooooow. I read a book. Then I think about it. Then I read it again and make notes about structure and plot and consistency and flow. Then I read it again and do a line-by-line critique of descriptions that seems odd, sentences that areincorrectly structured, POV slips, etc. For a really excellent, polished book that's at the pro level, it'll take me 6 - 10 hours. For a book that has a fair number of structural problems and some prose issues such as incorrect punctuation or sentence structure, I've spent 50 - 100 hours. It's a heck of a committment and a heck of a time sink. You probably want to figure out where you sit on the beta-continuum before you leap in and beta an entire book!

Absolutely not held against you. We see several such posts a week, occasionally several in a single day, from people who are too new to see how it all works.

Coffee's ready. Want a cup?

Maryn, pleased to meet you