Do You Keep Reading/Watching?

It’s impossible to link to Book Riot’s newsletter, so I’ll link instead to one of the sources they linked to about series drop off.

In traditional publishing, if book one isn’t widely read and enjoyed, there isn’t a book two. So if there is a book two, three, and four (and beyond), the first book was well-received. People enjoyed it.

Drop-off is the point at which people stop reading or watching something they enjoyed. For instance, I love the Three Pines series, but I petered out at book 12. I’ll probably go back and pick it up again in the future, but book 12 would be my drop-off point. For others, it’s earlier or later, and the average of all of our drop-off points gives insights into how deeply someone will get in a series.

So it’s kind of surprising that only 39.5% of people who read the first Harry Potter continued to book two. It’s a popular series, clearly well-loved, but 60.5% of people who started the first book said to themselves, “I’m okay not knowing how all of this turns out.” Only 57.5% of people who read the first Murderbot went on to the second book. Which means the readership for the third book in a sequential series is smaller and smaller until the series wraps up or dries out.

She explains:

On the other end of spectrum, we have series like Red Rising, Thursday Murder Club, Murderbot, and even Dungeon Crawler Carl. All of these have less than half the stickiness of the other group. That’s not to say these books aren’t huge success stories –they’ve lead to movies and tv shows and millions of books sold. But it also may explain one of the reasons why Richard Osman started a new series.

What is so interesting to me is when there are a limited number of books you’ll need to get through — for instance, five — to complete the series. And a person rates the first book well, but then stops reading the series. Totally understand if you don’t enjoy the first book and drop off, or if you see that reading the series is too much of a time investment. But I’m so curious about the people who drop off who enjoy the first book. Surely staying with a story you know you enjoy is less work than finding a new story that you may or may not enjoy the author’s writing style.

Do you tend to stick with series when you can see there are a limited number of books to get through to complete it? Or watch a television show through all seasons to its end?