As I mentioned in another post today, I am a little bit foggy on the mechanics of doing the Beta reading.
As I understand, the author send a part of, or the entire story, manuscript file to the Beta readers by email attachment. Of course, this require a similar system at the Beta's end, that is, software that can read the file. I would Wild Analytical Guess that about 80% users worldwide use a flavor of ms windoze with mstord. Other systems can read the .DOC file type, but I caution that few may be able to handle its .DOCX format.
Some may have other restrictions. I cannot receive my e-mail on this computer, so I must use another to fetch and send. That mean e-mail attachments has a more rigid filespec requirement than ms systems, and that between the two machines, I use the "sneaker-LAN" (a diskette or thumb drive with a FAT16 partition), thus imparting the 8-letter filename limit.
Also, how are the fixes, comments, changes, &c. made between the reader and writer? With WordPerfect, [RedLine] would work for recommended added text, [Strikeout] for text to be removed, and a [Comment] for comments, advice, and the like. I bring this up, because of all the conversions I have had to do, these features are not reliably ported over.
As I understand, the author send a part of, or the entire story, manuscript file to the Beta readers by email attachment. Of course, this require a similar system at the Beta's end, that is, software that can read the file. I would Wild Analytical Guess that about 80% users worldwide use a flavor of ms windoze with mstord. Other systems can read the .DOC file type, but I caution that few may be able to handle its .DOCX format.
Some may have other restrictions. I cannot receive my e-mail on this computer, so I must use another to fetch and send. That mean e-mail attachments has a more rigid filespec requirement than ms systems, and that between the two machines, I use the "sneaker-LAN" (a diskette or thumb drive with a FAT16 partition), thus imparting the 8-letter filename limit.
Also, how are the fixes, comments, changes, &c. made between the reader and writer? With WordPerfect, [RedLine] would work for recommended added text, [Strikeout] for text to be removed, and a [Comment] for comments, advice, and the like. I bring this up, because of all the conversions I have had to do, these features are not reliably ported over.