Patrick Walsh, an editing youtuber, had DNF’ed (did not finish) a book very late in the reading process and thought that had to be strange. He sent out question to his circle of friends of “Why do you DNF a book? Where were you in the reading process?” And he found three areas of read-quitting, for three different reasons at each stage.
The first and easiest he mentions right off the bat is “no questions”. I’m sure I’ve done an editing rant on this; it is one of the easiest “thank you, no thank you” rejects I do when slush reading. Sure the book is beautifully written, you can see the word flow and the story evolving, but without a question to pull you in, the story will not sell through the present electronic selling method of – open sample and read until you MUST.PURCHASE.BOOK! No question(s), no pull into story, no drive to buy … the story isn’t making it out of slush.
Watch the full video for the other two beginning issues, the three middle DNF issues, and the three-late-in-the-book DNF choices.
These are many of the same reasons books are not picked up by publishers or agents. They are, after all, reading the book too.
“I Tracked Why 100 Readers Stopped Reading — The Results Shocked Me” by Patrick Walsh (April 2026)