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As to beta readers, there are some good ones out there, but they're not easy to find. You do build up a relationship with your beta, to be sure. I know when I used to do this, I'd take on anything from a drabble, to multi chapter (with loooong chapters), without issue. But that would be when I had the time to actually beta read, and give the author who sent me the work my full attention.

On the subject of beta readers... I no longer use a beta reader for fanfiction purely and simply because I write big chapters and I'm impatient. I haven't built the kind of relationships online or in real life where 'hey, read this 10,000 word chapter? kthnxbai' is an acceptable utterance. Maybe its a personality flaw... I actually have a word-count limit dividing 'favor' and 'work'. Seriously, I would rather be a good enough writer that in fan fiction its not needed and as you say, in real life a professional is paid to wave a cat o' nine tails and scream "type, monkey!! Type faster and better!!" at me while I cower and desperately try to please. There doesn't seem to be an in between market of beta-editors who cater to wannabe authors, those stuck in limbo between wanting to be good enough to be professional and not having mastered/perfected the skill despite a vast knowledge or god forbid, the education and training. If I was to send out a manuscript and it was sent back with 'no thanks' and nothing more I'd be driven to suicide. Not because I consider my writing a precious baby or expect it to be a masterpiece at the first, second or even seventieth draft before an editor would take it but because I have done everything in my tax bracket to learn, study and understand this craft. Unfortunately life tests you first then you learn a lesson, not the other way around and writing to write as best one can is hard without a patient beta armed with a red pen. The other issue is that despite understanding the need, I don't believe in the possibility. I'm sorry but I don't believe in the unicorn that is a real-live human being with the experience to guide the leap across the chasm from wannabe to potential by saying 'sure! I would love to set my time aside to do that for nothing!' on a full-sized manuscript so I've aimed for being as good as I can be with what knowledge I have gathered and turning it into practice where-ever possible. I simply assumed that once I was brave enough to feel that what I had produced was worthy of at least an agent's time, the terrible and brutal experience that is making the dream come alive would begin as it does for everyone else without a 'writing-nanny' to see me off. I am sure a beta would be amazing but I'm a kid from the school of hard knocks and we look at unicorn pictures but we know they're not real. We get our hands dirty and our armpits sweaty and we try and try and try out little hearts out but anyone who comes along to say 'hey, why don't you do it the easy way? I know a guy!' usually goes missing, never to be found. Its a long-held natural suspicion of shitty human beings (it could also be cultural) coming to take, rob or steal from the niave and thanks to being churned through that grinder in ways that shattered my life more than once, I have become perhaps a little protective of my writing in the sense that I would rather do things with the lights on... in an office where everyone can see me. I know that might be a self-imposed stumbling block but thems the cards I gots to play with. I can't think of anything to make this less personal so I might tap out of this topic. I feel a bit nudged out anyway, but I did appreciate all the time and effort put into the answers I got and hope this helped out a few others as well. Thanks, Slayitalldown.

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yep, and now they're really deleted