Tuesday Tidbit: How can you inspire people to read your memoir to the end?

You might be surprised at the following stats. They surprised me when I ran across them yesterday.

Sarah Bolme, in her blog, Marketing Christian Books, writes,

• “The average time spent reading is on the decline…. On average, Americans read only 19 minutes per day, down from 10 years ago…. On weekends, Americans between the ages of 25 to 34 read for just eight minutes a day on average.”
• “Most people read only part of a nonfiction book. In fact, a study by Kobo found that religion books were the most abandoned of any genre. In North America, only a little over one-third of all religion books are read all the way to completion.”

You and I want people to read all way to the end of our memoirs.

But we can’t lock them in and force them to read our stories.

Sigh…. So what’s a Christian memoirist to do?

We can entice and persuade our readers. How?

For starters, Sarah says, write compelling prose. (And I’ve posted dozens of blog posts about how to do that.)

Sarah also offers this advice:

• Keep your page count low, under 200 pages. She recommends 120 to 150 pages.
• Readers are more likely to read short chapters because, she says, “People often read in soundbites.”
• If your memoir exceeds 200 pages, consider shortening it or divide it into two books.
• Keep the price down.

Click here to read Sarah’s blog post, An Important Element in Publishing Nonfiction.

Consider following Sarah Bolme’s blog, Marketing Christian Books. In addition to authoring Your Guide to Marketing Books in the Christian Marketplace, Sarah also serves as the Director of Christian Small Publishers Association.