Upping Your "Read Through" Rates!

In our blog a couple of weeks ago I posted a table (the one to the left) that showed the way read through rates for books in a series declined the longer the series ran.

I said at the time that there were reasons for that decline – some author driven and some reader driven – and that the explanations were really the subject for a whole different blog.
 
This is that blog.
 
This table shows the “benchmark” average read through rates for a series. The average is probably skewed by series with very high read through rates, such as the Harry Potter books, Jack Reacher books and others.
 
I suggested that read through rates of 70% from book 1 to book 2 for the average Indie author probably weren’t to be expected. But I also suggested that a read through rate of less than 50% was a matter for concern.

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Let’s start with the reader driven reasons why the read through rate for a series isn’t 100% every time.
 
Firstly, not every series is going to appeal to every reader. They may enjoy book 1, but they may decide that 1 book is enough and they want to find something different to read. That’s fair enough.

​I have enjoyed many a book but not gone on to read anything else by the same author, because I fancied something different.
 
The next reason is “reader fatigue”. This is readers who have read book 1 and maybe also book 2, but are starting to get a little bit bored with the series. Like the first cause above, the reader is hankering after something a little bit different and book 3 of your epic saga is not going to provide that - or so they believe.
 
I have experienced that with the Jack Reacher books. Having read several, I have taken a break, and I haven’t yet gone back to them.

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The final reason is distraction. The reader has every intention of reading the next book in the series, but they just happen to see a “shiny object” on Amazon, or maybe someone recommends a book to them, and they decide to read that instead.

​They feel sure they will return to your series later, but they never seem to get around to it because there are always more shiny objects and book recommendations.
 
eBooks make distraction so much easier to interfere with sales, because a hard copy book sitting on a table or bookshelf is hard to ignore, but one hidden away on a Kindle is far less intrusive.
 
I am as guilty of this as anyone. I have actually returned to a series downloaded through KindleUnlimited only to be told that the reading date has expired and I’m going to have to download it again. So, I go onto Amazon to do that, only to be distracted by another shiny object.
 
There is nothing much you can do about any of these reader behaviours. The best you can hope to do is make your series so compelling that boredom and distraction can’t find a way in.

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Now we come to author-based reasons for poor read through rates. These the author can fix, but they have to realise that they have a problem so that they know they have something to fix.
 
First of all, there is optimising the series to improve read through rates.
 
It has to be set up on Amazon (and elsewhere) as a series. If it isn’t then read through rates will suffer because people think they are buying a standalone book. It also has to have a series blurb that is every bit as compelling as the blurbs for the individual books.
 
The easiest book you will ever sell is to someone who has just enjoyed one of your books and wants to read another. This means setting up your “back matter” at the end of the book to make it easy for the reader.
 
Include the opening chapter of the next book (perhaps more than one chapter if they are short). I would suggest at least 5k words. It is normal for readers to read those and once they have started, they find it difficult to stop – so you don’t really have to do anything else except make it easy for them to find the rest of the book.

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Which means putting a link of the extract in the ebook so that they can click straight through to the sales page and hit that “buy now” button. Make it a universal link so it goes to the right page for the territory in which the reader lives, because the more times they have to click the less likely it is that they will buy.
 
Make sure the link goes to the series page – not to the individual page for book 2 (or whatever book it is).
 
There are very sound reasons for linking to the series page.
 
First of all, there are no adverts on that page – so no shiny objects to tempt the reader away. Secondly, there is a great big button that allows the reader to buy the whole series at once – which some readers do. Even if they don’t buy the whole series, they may buy more than one book.
 
It is a smart button, so it knows which books in the series the reader has already bought and doesn’t include those in the price. It even knows when you are running a Kindle Countdown Deal so it will adjust the price for the series.
 
One important thing to know about series pages is that every time you add a book to the series, Amazon changes the ASIN. That means that you have to create new universal links for it and change them in all your marketing and your backmatter. If you don’t the reader will see a “page not found” message and you will lose the sale.

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Next up is category selection. Some readers only read a single genre of book. They have seen yours, thought it was in the genre they like and bought the book. They may even enjoy it up to a point. But they won’t buy the next in the series because it isn’t in their favoured genre.
 
Book covers are the usual cause of the reader being misled, but if it shows up in a category search under the wrong category, that will also cause the problem. So, choose your category or categories with care and make sure the cover is appropriate for those categories.
 
You may think that is a pretty obvious point to make, but some authors mistakenly think that listing their book in the most popular categories will be good for sales. It isn’t, because the readers who buy by category alone don’t like being misled. It can also screw up your advertising strategy big time but that, again, is the subject for a different blog

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But the main reason for poor read through rates is a bit more difficult for authors to accept.

​It may be that readers just don’t like the first book, so they aren’t interested in buying the second.
 
There can be many reasons for that dislike: poor quality writing, uninteresting characters, poorly structured plot, too many typos and a whole lot more.
 
You have to identify those issues and fix them, or you will never get good read through rates for the series. It is the major reason for the benchmark read through rate from book 1 to book 2 being only 70% in the first place. For the Indie author that rate (as explained above) is going to be lower anyway, but you can improve it if you can fix the worst issues.
 
So, to summarise. There is nothing much you can do to change reader behaviour when it comes to improving read through rates, but there is plenty you can do to fix author behaviour.
 
You can either accept your poor read through rates – or you can take action. It’s over to you.
 
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