Episode 184: Why Readers Quit On Books

In this week's episode, we take a look at why readers quit on a book, and what writers can do to avoid that.

This week’s coupon is for the audiobook of GHOST IN THE MAZE as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of GHOST IN THE MAZE for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code:

WINTERMAZE

The coupon code is valid through February 3rd, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter chill, we’ve got you covered!

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello everyone. Welcome to Episode 184 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 19th, 2024 and today we're going to talk about why readers might give up on a book. Before we get into that, let's have our Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Maze as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Maze for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERMAZE and that is WINTERMAZE. That will be in the show notes along with the link to my Payhip store and the audiobook. This coupon code is valid through February 3rd, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter chill (and it is very cold today), we've got you covered.

Before we get to our main topics this week, let's have some updates on my current writing projects. The rough draft of Shield of Storms is done. It was 103,000 words and I am currently editing it. If all goes well, I am very much hoping to have it out either the last week of January or the first week of February (though as I look at my calendar app here, it turns out that it happens to be the same week), so hopefully it will be out sometime around that. I am also 2/3 of the way through Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling, the second book in my Sevenfold Sword Online LitRPG series. That puts me at about 62,000 words of a planned 90,000. So if all goes well, that should be coming out very shortly after Shield of Storms. I am also about 14,000 words into Wizard Thief, the second book in the Half-Elven Thief series, and that will come out later this spring because I will need to write Ghost in the Veils first before I finish Wizard Thief. So after Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling is done, Ghost in the Veils will be my next major project and we do have recording slots scheduled for both Shield of Storms and Ghost in the Veils, so hopefully those will, when they are done, be in audiobook form before too much longer.

00:02:07 Main Topic: Why Readers Don’t Finish a Book

Without any further ado, let's get to our main topic. I thought this week it might be interesting to discuss why readers don't finish a book or why they give up on a book and don't finish it. For me, that is a professional interest obviously, because I want people to read my books and enjoy them and you know, get to the end and then buy the sequel. So I thought it would be interesting to dig into why readers might not want to finish books. As I mentioned before, I have a transcriptionist working on my podcast now, and I'm very grateful for her help. She also did some research among various reader groups to find out why readers might give up on a book.

So the first interesting thing to look at is an old Goodreads survey back from 2013 discussing why a reader might not finish a book and it was interesting to break down the numbers. 15.8% will give up after fewer than 50 pages if they don't enjoy the book. 27.9% will give up between 50 to 100 pages. 7.6% will try to make it to 100 pages before they give up on the book. 100 plus pages, people will try to get through is 10.6% and 38.1% of people will finish a book they start, no matter what. Though as an indie author, our interest is in making sure that people like the book enough to buy the sequel, which is not likely to happen if they are getting through the book as a grim slog because they always finish the book, no matter what.

So what are some reasons that people will give up on a book or if they grimly grind through to the end because they started the book, what would be reasons they didn't enjoy the book, even though they are committed to finishing it? It turns out the number one reason people give up on a book probably will not shock you: it is that the book is boring. There's not enough action, not enough things are happening to draw the reader in. This is far and away the most common reason that people will give up on a book. Of course what constitutes boredom will vary from person to person obviously, but here are some common themes that we found: the book has too slow of a start or the book has too much info dumping or description at the beginning, the writing is just too confusing/dense, and the pacing is too slow or not enough is happening or action is not flowing.

Observant listeners might notice might have noticed that all these things kind of play into each other and they're in fact a bit interconnected. Too slow a start can occur if there is too much info dumping or there is too much description, or the pacing is too slow, or not enough is happening. There is a reason that many writer’s workshops and advice to writers recommend that new writers begin in media res, because it is much easier to hook the reader and hold their interest and then bring them in. That's another reason why writers often spend a lot of time analyzing and obsessing over their story’s opening sentence because they want to make it as interesting and compelling as possible to bring the reader in. So, as an experienced writer (I feel safe in saying that since Shield of Storms will be my 148th novel), what do I do to try and get the reader’s interest?

First of all, never ever start with the weather. There's a reason “it was a dark and stormy night” is a cliche. The weather is boring unless it directly impacts the plot in some way. Like just off the top of my head, let's say you're writing a thriller novel where the police are about to stop a drug bust with the Coast Guard on a ship, except the hurricane is coming up and it's raining. That is one of the few times the weather would be relevant to the beginning., but it's a good idea to avoid the weather.

Too much info dumping or description at the beginning is also something to avoid and you want to avoid this by parceling out just enough information to pull the reader's interest. It's always good to leave, you know, a few more cards in your hand, so to speak, in terms of plot reveals and to pull in the reader’s interest. It's good to start with action or if not action, since not every genre of fiction lends itself to, you know, shootouts and sword fights and battling wizards and so forth, is also good to start with something that would be emotionally significant to the character, like the main character gets laid off or a long lost family member shows up or something that would be or like the main character’s, you know, son or daughter gets expelled from high school, something emotionally significant that will draw the reader in. And if you can end the first chapter with not so much a cliffhanger, but a bit of a plot hook to continue pulling in the reader, that would be good to do. So, those tips and tricks will hopefully help you avoid a boring beginning to your book, and hopefully a boring book altogether.

The next most common reason people gave up on a book was that they simply were not enjoying it. This can be incredibly subjective for many reasons, and so you know, one man's enjoyment is another man's unendurable tedium. However, there are common things that you can avoid to keep people from not enjoying your book. One thing to avoid is not meeting genre expectations, where the more specific of a genre you are writing in, the more people have certain expectations. If you're writing a clean romance, for example, people will become very annoyed if you have explicit sex scenes throughout the book or for some reason you decide to put explicit violence inside a clean romance book, or if you are writing a urban fantasy novel and there is no one using magic and no fantastic creatures, that will very quickly turn the readers off. There are other common plot devices that people dislike, such as contrived misunderstandings or people who behave stupidly to service the plot. The common example of this is the hero suddenly doing something very dumb in the second act to advance the plot or the villain, who has previously been shown as very intelligent, suddenly doing very stupid things to allow the heroes to overcome him.

Another thing that people really tend not to like is explicitly graphic violence, especially against women, children, or pets. However, this is once again an area of subjective taste. The audience of people who find those things off-putting and disturbing is perhaps thankfully, quite larger than the sort of audience that prefers to read that kind of thing. So if you do write graphic violence like that, you are automatically cutting yourself out of a significant portion of your potential audience.

People also strongly dislike characters who are either blandly good robots or completely unlikable. This is tricky and comes with experience because you don't want to make your characters perfect with no flaws whatsoever. Only God is perfect and that does not apply to human beings, who all have a varied collection of flaws, so it can be tricky to have a character or protagonist who is compelling to the reader, but also has flaws in a believable way and the flaws aren't convenient to the plot, so to speak, which ties into an earlier point.

A significant portion of people do not like love triangles, which is funny because there's also a significant portion of people who do like love triangles, though I have to admit I did have a love triangle in the earlier books of the Frostborn series. It goes back to about 2014 now, and so ten years later, I still occasionally get angry emails about this love triangle I wrote to the Frostborn series ten years ago at this point. So that would depend on the kind of genre you're writing in and you would want to make sure that if you want to read love triangle, it might be in a genre that expects that sort of thing, like certain genres of romance.

Some readers also find false accusation plots incredibly stressful or anxiety provoking to read. I think this might be a case of being sure that is something that would work in the genre you're writing in, like in police procedurals, private detective fiction, and sometimes thrillers, false accusation plots are a standard trope. Like, you know, the private investigator gets hired by someone who believes they or they or a relative have been falsely accused of a crime and so the private investigator has to solve that. So that is again something to be aware of in the genre you're writing.

A subset of the audience doesn't like depressing or overly dark fiction, especially if they are not expecting that tone based on the book’s cover and or jacket copy. That is again would tie into last week's episode, which I think was Episode 183 (Transcriptionist’s Note: Yes, it’s Episode 183) where we talked about how when the important things of cover design is that the cover needs to match the genre and tone of your book in general. So if you're writing a book that's very depressing or tense, it's good to have a cover that will accurately reflect that, but that's another discussion.

And one thing that many readers dislike is sex scenes and profanity, though this is a very much a “your mileage may vary” topic. Some reader readers will stop reading the minute any of those things come up, so no matter what you choose to do, you're going to annoy someone. I occasionally get annoyed emails from Cloak Mage readers who dislike how much Nadia swears in those books when she gets upset, but the thing is, in my head I actually dial it down quite a bit because I feel like If I was writing in a more realistic way, Nadia is the sort of person who swear just a lot, especially if she gets annoyed or is angry about something. I actually dial it down from the way she sounds into my head to the way it turns out on the page so truly, your mileage may vary with this topic, and you may as well write what you think will work best for your genre because no matter what you write, it's going to annoy somebody.

Another thing that will get a reader to give up on a book is weak writing. And again we've entered the realm of subjective taste about what weak writing may or may not be, but there are some common themes. One thing that annoys people is bad world building and this can be if you're writing a fantasy novel, it can be the world doesn't make sense, if aspects of it are contradictory, or it seems too modern or too pointlessly anachronistic. World building also applies to contemporary fiction, especially crime and thriller fiction, where if you have obvious errors of fact in like how police agencies work or how firearms work or the process of investigating a crime. Anyone who knows anything about those things will spot those errors and probably get turned off.

Another thing many readers dislike is overly abstract or conceptual language or a book that is unnecessarily difficult for the sake of appearing clever or important. Aspiring literary fiction writers can fall into this trap quite frequently. People really dislike spelling and grammar mistakes or bad editing, though, to be fair, mileage can vary on this quite widely. Some readers, they have no interest whatsoever in typos. Some will absolutely lose their temper if they find a single typo in a book. So it behooves us as writers to try to have the best editing possible of our books. The thing with this though, is sometimes you will get emails from readers pointing out spelling errors or grammatical errors and it turns out according to the actual rules of grammar they're actually wrong. I've had this several times where someone would e-mail me complaining about a sentence or a spelling and I check it out and it turns out no, I actually was correct, they were wrong, and it turns out they were, you know, taught that way, you know, 50 years ago in 3rd grade and they learned it wrong back then because their teacher didn't know the proper rule and just has stuck in their head ever since. So this is an aspect of being a writer where you'll have to answer with diplomatic tact or not at all if someone emails you complaining about your book’s grammar.

Another thing readers dislike is characters who haven't been developed enough to understand their motivations or their actions don't match up with what has been established previously. This will tie back in further to a reason people don't enjoy the book, where characters will act against their previously established nature to advance the plot or the villains suddenly becomes stupid. Another thing people really dislike is clunky political or social commentary of current issues, especially random monologues from characters to express their opinions on a matter. This is something best avoided regardless of your opinion on any contemporary social or political topics. For one thing, it will alienate a significant portion of your audience. Another thing, it's very difficult to do well, and for a third point, it will age your book quite drastically and take readers out of the book.

I actually know a very good example of this I can use is the sitcom 30 Rock from the late 2000s and the early 2010s. I think the show's final season or second to last season was running during the 2012 election between President Obama and then former governor and now currently Senator Romney. And so one of the characters on the show was supporting Obama and another was supporting Romney and they tried to have some comedy based off their interactions and their opposing support for these presidential candidates. And the trouble is, it was kind of funny at the time but it's been 12 years since that. It is now very dated. And, you know, the world has moved on to new controversies and new elections several times. Former President Obama is now a former president who occasionally makes former presidential announcements. Mitt Romney is a senator from Utah. And so these jokes from 12 years ago about the election are very dated and just kind of clunky and not funny anymore. So it's good to keep that in mind if you want to comment about contemporary messages in your fiction, it can have many, many drawbacks and can easily backfire and alienate a significant portion of your audience. There's a great quote associated with the movie business that no one really knows who it was really attributed to, but I think it applies to writers as well: If you want to send a message, call Western Union and keep it out of your fiction.

A couple of random things as well. since we've covered the big things. Sometimes the print is too hard to read or the reader dislikes the font. This obviously is more of a problem for print books than for ebooks, where if you're reading an ebook you can usually change the font and the size of the font. So if you are making your own paperbacks, as most indie authors do, it's a good idea to pick one of the standard fonts, you know, one of the basic boring fonts that aren't going to annoy the reader who is reading your book. Another thing that can really annoy people is if your ebook is poorly formatted and doesn't render properly on a device, and this generally happens when someone is formatting an ebook and doesn't know how to do it, or they try to get clever with really fancy formatting and forget that it doesn't work universally across all devices, which is why it's usually a good idea to try and keep your ebook formatting as simple as possible, because that reduces the chances that something go wrong on the way a book renders on a particular device.

So that is a good roundup of things that may stop a reader from finishing a book. However, if someone dislikes your book for any of the above reasons, remember that all taste is subjective and that no matter how good of a book it is and no matter how well written your book is, there's going to be someone who dislikes it because you can't please everybody.

So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and enjoyable. Quick note of thanks to my transcriptionist who did all the research. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.