What if your Beta experience did not go as planned?

[JRehnay]

Originally Posted by G. Applejack

PM me if you're up for it, but no pressure. I understand if you need to take some time to recover after that crit.

That is amazingly sweet of you. Thank you very much for the offer. I would be thrilled to take you up on that sometime in the future. I was lucky enough to receive some more helpful feedback from some other readers a few months after that incident with the "Bad Beta" and that particular piece is set to be (self) published quite soon.

Originally Posted by Oldbrasscat

I can tell you that the lady above is an excellent beta reader. You've done three now for me, I think? Four if you count the first half of Knight. You can trust her.

Thank you That is quite an endorsement!

Originally Posted by Kevin Nelson

I agree that her behavior was way out of line, but I have to wonder about the above point. Of course, it's implicit in beta reading that your reader shouldn't share your manuscript with the whole world--that goes without saying. Does it also go without saying that even her own spouse shouldn't see it?

If someone specifically requested that I show their manuscript to no one else, I would certainly respect their wishes. But otherwise, one other person might get to see at least a few pages.

Am I thinking about this the wrong way? What's the etiquette here?

You know, that's really a good question. Maybe I was too sensitive about that. I feel like maybe this is a case-by-case issue? For me it might not be okay, but for others it might be perfectly fine. I probably should have told her that stipulation beforehand instead of simply assuming she'd never tell anyone.

[DancingMaenid]

I've been pretty lucky with betas, though I've had a couple who didn't really give me any feedback beside correcting a couple typos I'd missed, which was a bit disappointing.

But not too long ago, someone agreed to beta for me once and then never followed through. It was a long-ish short story. I sent it to her and she promised to give me some feedback soon. Then a few weeks went by. I finally asked for an update, and I tried to give her an out in case she couldn't do it anymore. She promised she'd get to it within a few days.

Then about a month went by. I'd pretty much assumed that the betaing wasn't going to happen. Eventually, she apologized for not getting back to me and said she was going to send me some notes that weekend. She sounded genuinely apologetic, and I downplayed the situation a lot, telling her it was no big deal. I'm not sure if that was a mistake on my part or not, but I wanted to be nice. Throughout all of this, I really tried to stress that I understood if she didn't have the time. But she swore she wanted to do it, and I didn't want to tell her no.

She never did the beta job and never brought it up again, even though we occasionally interact on another website. The story is long-finished now. It's kind of awkward for me, because it's been so long now that saying "Oh, by the way, don't worry about that story I sent you six months ago" doesn't seem quite appropriate. But it's a weird thing to not have resolved, especially since this is someone I "see" occasionally online.

I don't blame her for not doing it--I assume real life got the best of her, and I wouldn't have minded if she'd told me that there'd been a change in her availability. But I would have preferred that over having her keep promising to get to it "this weekend." I didn't want to be pushy, but I wanted some resolution.

If it happens to me in the future, maybe I'll be firmer about cutting off the beta relationship if it reaches a certain point. I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to be confrontational or make her feel bad, but maybe it would have been best.

I've been pretty lucky when it comes to people I've betaed for, too. Everyone I've worked with has been pretty gracious.

[Velcro]

I think I can safely say I had a pretty bad beta experience from two different beta readers. Basically, we had agreed to beta swap. After testing out a couple chapters each, we made the swap. I read and sent back notes for both writers. Didn't hear a peep from either for a couple weeks. Reached out again to see if they had any questions or comments regarding my notes on their stories, and I haven't heard anything for almost two months. I'm assuming I will never hear back from them (or that my story was so awful that they couldn't read it past the first couple chapters).

I also had a similar experience a year ago, but at least we only swapped a couple chapters before I never heard anything back.

Regardless, I keep writing and I've since found a way to get my stuff read and get valuable feedback (and return the favor too). So, my story has a happy ending! Just wanted to share my tale.