So after a number of posts about why readers will ditch a book, and how to make sure you write characters so they don’t, I found this infographic and laughed.  I read a ton of blogs, but I have a tendency to let them pile up for weeks and then read 200+ posts for hours on a random Saturday.  If I hadn’t been so behind on Nathan Bransford’s blog, I would have found this a lot earlier and had some cold hard facts in hand.  The lovely people at Goodreads surveyed their members and have provided us with The Psychology of Abandonment.

My fellow authors, we have caught a break.  It turns out 38.1% of the population will read our book to the bitter end NO MATTER WHAT.  I also noted that only 4.9% of people reported that they stopped reading because they didn’t like the main character as opposed to 46.4% that claimed it was because the book was slow, boring.  I would still argue that not caring about the characters (which is different from not liking them) makes a book very boring, but I wonder if the complaint there was more about pacing.  I found the results fascinating, especially that people abandon Catch-22.  Okay, it’s a little hard to follow at first, but that’s a good book.  What surprised you?