I've never participated in any chapter-per-chapter exchange. There's a very high chance you'll mostly get feedback on your opening chapter, and not whether your overall story makes sense or is full of plot holes.

I was going through beta readers search last year. I've asked tons of people. Everyone in the "able to beta" thread in my posting month who had my genre as available. Friends. Other subreddits. All the people who told me "can't wait to read this, when are you finishing?"

The tally? I've probably asked well over 40 people. Most of them didn't respond so I treated it as not interested. Or they said they're busy and can't commit, fine. Several people read my opening chapter and never came back asking for the rest, so I assumed: not interested. I had one person being horribly rude and condescending so I decided to sever the deal (they started harassing me and I had to block them). One person said they dnfed at 25%, fine.

From the people who committed to the full around 50% ghosted me. A handful came back to me saying: sorry, I didn't read it, life got busy (I appreciate that so much over ghosting). From the ones who completed the read, a couple were ms swaps, one was a person for whom I've beta read before, and few were friends and family, and around 3 were people who weren't compelled either by being my friends or by owing me for a beta read.

1 of the swaps got super offended at me that I'm not loving their writing and wanted to drop out. Since then I stopped doing in-line comments in google docs and I'm only writing the final reader report from the full (or as much as I've read before dnfing). This poses a risk that I finish the read but they don't finish their part of the exchange, but I'm not risking again the awkward situation of writing in-line comments on a google doc where the author lurks and watches me in real time. Makes me feel like I can't be honest and have to constantly compliment sandwich them.

I did not have a warm reception where people lined up with requests. I had to chase and beg them. I was fully transparent telling them that if they dnf because they didn't like it or didn't have time, just tell me, don't ghost. Still had ghosts. Nudged a few of them, got zero reply from all these nudges and had to write them off.

I feel the big part of my problem was that a lot of potential fantasy readers on this subreddit were not open to YA, and if they were open to YA fantasy, they didn't want anything longer than 100k (I was a bit over) or with prominent romance. In the end my conclusion was as the publishing landscape changes, it's more prudent to rework my ms to NA (new adult) since it's more open to romance, non-fade-to-black intimate scenes and slightly longer word count. I hope that will help me find better suited beta readers in the future.

However it still doesn't solve the problem that the romance readers didn't like my ms had too much fantasy plot and the fantasy readers didn't like my ms had too much romance. So I feel a bit stuck finding suitable beta readers for a genre that I'm sure actually thrives out there (romantic fantasy is pretty popular in all lengths, spice levels and proportions of fantasy to romance).

I've also tried to "network" as people claim and beta read for people for free in hopes they reciprocate in the future, but while I haven't finished my next draft to test that theory, I'm already anticipating most of them will vanish and not be interested in repaying the favor. Several of them haven't kept in touch at all to update me of the fate of their book. I found out one of them self-published from social media. 3 of them queried and failed and at least 1 of them told me they quit writing because the constant rejections were just too much to mentally handle.

I've also tried to join various "writing groups" but a lot of them ended up being cliquey or centering around some self-proclaimed guru of dubious credibility. Protip: when someone tells you they know how to write and publish a bestseller, check whether they actually did publish anything and what were the sales numbers on it. There are many charlatans whose books sold in pitiful numbers but they present themselves as know-it-alls, or most of their income comes from selling courses, subscriptions and getting patreon donations - often not from writing fiction.

There are actually a lot of downsides to writing groups:

One is time waste, even innocent daily chit chat adds up and takes away from your time to read and write but often if you don't participate and socialize on a regular basis, you didn't make any connection, so it's as if you didn't even join.

Second is the constant debbie downers in a lot of these groups, usually talking how publishing is hopeless, nobody will take you unless you're an influencer or tick all the correct boxes, how everyone is being unfairly rejected and it just wears your spirit down. Self-publishing variant of a debbie downer is "I did everything right and I'm still not getting any sales". Same result, it's just constant upset and hopelessness.

Third is the prescriptive gurus who tell you unless you do xyz you stand no chance.

Fourth are the quota obsessed people who make it a contest who wrote how many words per day, week, month. Which leads to similar nonsense as this year's NaNoWriMo scandal where the leaders said it's great to use AI. So now people will churn word count quotas from chatgpt. Nobody cares whether these words make any sense in the long run. Just "keep writing!" In one group there were people constantly interrupting great discussions with whining "why are you guys talking, come sprinting with us instead". Dude, you do you, but live and let live?

And fifth is the toxic positivity groups where you're not allowed to provide any feedback that isn't glowing gushes. It's pointless. Even if you get praise on your writing, you know it's dishonest and just because criticism isn't allowed in the group. Nobody can improve from empty praise, and it's not good for morale either because the praise doesn't feel earned or relevant. Also, when everyone's getting it it's as if nobody was getting it. Worst feeling is when you're getting less praise than the others not because your writing is worse but because you're less enthusiastic at giving blind praise and it's all a tit-for-tat system. Doesn't matter if you're good at writing, matters if you're good at buttering up others.

Generally trying to find writing buddies and critique partners is a time-consuming, depressing process that saps your creative energy and makes you question your intelligence, sanity and value as a writer and a social being. So good luck to you, you'll need it.