The beta reader situation is... not greeeeeat. My co-author and I have been part of beta reader groups where we've provided feedback on a couple of books but when our turn rolls around the group kinda falls apart. This manuscript has been read by a few friends but not really read critically. We got some feedback from an agent who asked us to revise and resubmit and that feedback drove a lot of our revisions for the fourth draft but we haven't gotten any bites on our latest round of querying.Thanks. It was a long, LONG road.
As far as professional feedback, what's your beta reader situation? I know that's not "professional," but good beta readers can level up your writing tremendously, and can often be critical to getting you to the level where the professionals like agents and editors want to give you that final nudge for a publishable book. If you've got a reader or three who's editorial insight you trust, that's a lot of progress already. Barring that, if you have the money, there's also professional editors that can provide what's called a "developmental edit," but these usually cost hundreds of dollars, and are essentially a paid beta read, but of course, from a pro.
So now I feel like the book is good enough to catch someone's attention but not good enough for them to want to stick with it or champion it in any way. We're looking into trying to hire a developmental editor but the wait lists we've been looking at are long and our budget is veeeeery tight at the moment. I'd like to try to get some good beta readers but as noted before, we've had some pretty rough luck with that. Obviously we'll keep going but I'm a bit discouraged that we just can't seem to get any help to improve our project. Sorry for the vent, but I figure better here than on Twitter.