Some of the best writers on this site, past and present, still use book editors, although there is another (or additional) option that is much lower cost as well as a great learning experience: a workshop site like this one.
Many of us have been here for years, including published authors (I'm not one of them yet), some for well over a decade. If you want to see what a site like this can do for you and teach you (you'd probably be amazed), try posting your first chapter here and see what kind of feedback the folks here can give..
The caveat is that you have to review the work of others to get reviewed on an ongoing basis. See an article I posted in this forum for tips on how to maximize the number of reviews you can get here, preferably before you post your first chapter, otherwise you may make posting mistakes that'll waste time and points, which you collect (easily) by consistently trading reviews with about 4 or more other members. The article is pinned near the top of this forum.
While that may sound like a lot of work, it's how most of the best writers and reviewers on this site became as good as they are. We learn not only by getting feedback from others, but also by studying how the best writers here write as well as they do. And the feedback comes at a stage much earlier than beta readers can give, and certainly more effective than most family and friends can provide.
I volunteer user support here as time permits (I'm one of the other writers), so if you need any help coming up to speed quickly, feel free to send me a connection request, and we can trade private messages. For the fastest answers, post your questions or concerns here (like you just did!) and someone else is likely to answer before I even see it. To connect, click on my name or avatar to the left of this post, click the blue Connect button near the upper right, fill in the field, and submit. When I accept, we'll be connected.
FYI, this is a small site of folks focused on writing publishable work, so you'll probably need to review work from other genres beside your own to get enough feedback from the best writers, some of whom write in several genres.
Three of the biggest things you can do here to maximize reviews are post to the Premium group using points (this is where the best writers and authors work), don't post overly long chapters as a single post (ideally 2500 words or less, although you can go higher, but it greatly reduces the number of people who have time to review your work), and most important, review, review, review the work of active writers (from the stuff scrolling by on your home page). If your chapter is longer than 2500 words (they often are) try posting it as two chapters here.
Most writers prefer to receive inline reviews as they allow for more detailed, actionable feedback than you can give or get with a regular review.
Please read the aforementioned article as well for more tips.
Welcome to the site.
Dirk
