Potential scam | Beta-reading heads-up
A word of warning... I put out a call for Brit-pickers for my latest story, and got two strangers who offered. Between when I sent out the draft to them and when I heard back, a UK friend became available for Brit-picking and zapped all my Americanisms; I sent the revised draft to the 2 strangers and left it up to them to decide whether to give it an additional look. They each sent me oddly-professionally-formatted general feedback, with no line reading (suggestions for specific punctuation or word-choice changes or the like), which was predominantly praise rather than criticism.
The first then said 'oh by the way I charge for my services,' requesting $10-15 (for a 200-word drouble, mind) and received a curt explanation of how and why fandom beta-reading does not work that way and also how contract law does not work that way. The other 'only' asked for $6-7 as a 'favour' — less pushy than the first, but not not pushy — and received a similar explanation as to why that wasn't happening.
Both of these beta-for-pay people asked that I 'at least' give them a positive review on Fiverr (a website I've heard of but never used); I suspect that Fiverr requires money to change hands before a review can be submitted, and said as much. I also suspect that Fiverr's terms of service forbid this kind of predatory 'service' purveying, and/or that Fiverr, or some third party, may be encouraging jobbers to employ this strategy for guilting writers into paying after the fact despite not having agreed to do so in the first place.
Word to the wise.
