Reader Retention Quotes

The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight pages.

The first page sells this book. The last page sells your next book.

Of course, you always think about how it will be read. I always aim for a reading in one sitting.

Never change the URL of your blog. I've done it once, and I lost much of my readership. It took several months to build up the same reader patterns and trust.

No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down--impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.

I don't want my readers slowed down by long passages of narrative.

No publication is a staple of life. It's not bread and water. You have to make it noteworthy in people's minds and even in their hands as they're holding it.

Reader loyalty will stay because I'm not changing.

Why the brevity? Because I'd rather people read my book twice than only half-way through

I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.

It is hard news that catches readers. Features hold them.

The first paragraph of my book must get me my reader. The last paragraph of a chapter must compel my reader to turn the page. The last paragraph of my book must ensure that my reader looks out for my next book.

You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.

The first thing you learn when you're blogging is that people are one click away from leaving you. So you've got to get to the point, you can't waste people's time, you've got to give them some value for their limited attention span.

There aren't too many people out there who can start one of my books and not finish it. I don't think too many writers can say that.

I have the most loyal readers in the world.

But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.

It is almost impossible to win back a reader's loyalty once it's gone.

People are used to streaming and binge-watching. When they see an author they like, if there's only one book, even if they like the book, they're going to forget about you. The way to keep you in their mind and to get you to become a habit for these readers is you have to have a lot of product out there for them to read.

They are servants to a fickle public; they must seize its attention by novelty, hold it by new injections of interest, and then move on to something else. A newspaper can risk boring its public at its own peril.

You can do the best research and be making the strongest intellectual argument, but if readers don't get past the third paragraph you've wasted your energy and valuable ink.

The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers.

People read me but they don't subscribe.

When you're writing for the Internet, you have the analytics, and you know that people are bailing every second. But various people kept reminding me that once people have bought a book, they're in. You don't have to be selling them on every page.

Don't send out a newsletter just to send out a newsletter. One newsletter a year that is really interesting is more beneficial than 12 that are boring. If you write two or three boring newsletters in a row, your readers will start to think you write boring books.