RISE FROM THE DEAD!!
I'm resurrecting this post 'cause I want to give people who responded before a little reminder that they did, in fact, respond before. And to open the door to anyone else. Check the first post for what I'm looking for in beta readers, and let me know if you want to read! It is right now 82,632 words long, according to MS Word, and is broken up into two unevenly sized documents because Word started freaking out when the first one got too long. There *are* a few empty space breaks, but I have NOT put chapters in yet. That'll probably be done after betaing, when I'm sure I'm done all the editing and can make the breaks appropriately.
I have no idea how long authors generally give beta readers to get through something this length. Naturally I don't want to wait forever. If nothing else, I do NOT want to be sending my query to agents anytime near Christmas.
I will say that this is done now. 100% done, as long as I can keep my fidgety little fingers out of it. What I might do, what I'm thinking about doing, is making a questionnaire of sorts to send to people. What I'm thinking is you'd read it, send me your comments, and then I'd send you the questions I want specific feedback on. And it would be very specific. Things like, "Did ____ plot point seem contrived, or did it the explanations given satisfy you?" or "Did the conversation where _____ happened work, or was it too much an "As you know, Bob" scene?"
<evilWillow>Questions? Comments?</evilWillow>
Edit to add: After a comment (thanks Meg), I thought I'd say I'm willing to send you a hard copy if you'd rather have that than an electronic copy. And I'm not looking for more than 5 or 6 people. Of course the more opinions the better, but the more people who have it the longer it's going to take and... Ok, I suck, I'm impatient.