Due to the reader input required in many hypertext works, one reader's experience of a hypertext story may be very different to another's experience of the same text. Joe's Heartbeat in Budapest is a hypertext work by Ruth Nestvold, in which the 'reader' is participating in a conversation with a second party, presumably the narrator. The reader has a choice of different ways to respond to the dialogue being presented, and although these responses are limited, they still provide a fairly large scope of directions for the conversation to take. This is because the reader's choice of response to any given piece of dialogue in turn effects what the text says next. The way the reader reacts and participates in the fictional conversation affects how the narrator responds, and thus the entire shape that the conversation takes.

Although the author still maintains a certain amount of control over the outcome of the text due to the limits placed on the reader's responses, the way the text unravels depends entirely on the reader's choices and interaction with the text. There is no 'default pathway' to follow through the story, everything is dependent on the reader's choices, including the progression of the story. In a sense, the story does not exist without the reader - unlike a print book, one cannot simply open the text to any given page and read it without making their way there first, through a maze of dialogue.

The responses the reader may choose from are limited to four, single word choices - 'yes', 'no', 'maybe' and 'bitch'. While the reader can usually choose one of the four, sometimes there is only the option between two or three, or occasionally no choice, with only one response available. The limitations placed on the reader's choice of responses can be intensely frustrating. However, this only serves to show more clearly the lack of communication between the two characters, which seems to be the defining aspect of their relationship. The text is also, to a point, gender ambigious – there are only a few passages which reveal the narrator to be female.

All of these aspects contribute to the experience of reading the hypertext conversation, and show how different every reading of the same hypertext can be.