My buddy Therese Walsh, Writer Unboxed, clued me into an interesting study of when readers quit on a book. The article on Digital Book World, Start strong or lose your readers by Andrew Rhomberg reinforces the message you get on this blog. Not only does the first page have to be compelling, so do the rest. It was interesting to me to see that, on average, about 40% of readers finish a book, though one of the books they studied lost 90% of its readers before the third chapter started.
Here's a little from the article--you should check it out, though; the graphs of how a reader's attention decays while progressing through a book is worth a look and a thought.
“In today’s world of infinite distractions, you need to capture the reader’s attention within the first 50 to 100 pages. . . . If they are women, you have 50 pages, maybe even 100, to woo them. If they are men . . . you may have just as few as 30 pages to achieve that goal. Men are simply more fickle; women persevere for longer. Though once committed men are equally likely to finish a book as women are, except if the book is about feelings and relationships. Then all bets are off.”
For what it's worth.
Ray
© 2016 Ray Rhamey