I've started, so I'll finish.

 

With the Tories on the brink of introducing yet more anti-union legislation, threatening the few remaining rights to dissent and protest the conventionally employed still possess, I find myself facing the kind of situation guaranteed to bring organised labour onto the streets with another unilateral change in terms and conditions from Amazon. 

As well as being able to buy ebooks (or download mine free, if you have patience and follow the timetable), it is also possible for 'Kindle Unlimited' subscribers to 'borrow' them.  As a staunchly Kindleless Luddite, I have no idea how this works - does the file disappear from your screen at the end of the 'loan'?  Are there fines for late return? - but what has changed for me is how I earn vanishingly small amounts of money from the process.  Payments used to be per book borrowed; we are now to be paid instead by pages read.

Since I do not have vast numbers of readers borrowing my books at any given time, this has the potential to give me an unexpected insight into where my stories grip their readers, and where they might flag.  This week, via the 'reports' tools Amazon provide, I have been able to follow the progress of one anonymous reader through Grand Union: cover-to-cover in four days with a gentle start, a good binge to the middle of the story, another light day and finally a sprint to the finish.  It will be interesting to see if that is typical.  I hope so; GU has apparently gripped this particular reader all the way to its conclusion, which is good news for the Beverage Fund.  Where I probably stand to lose is with those readers lured into Continual Supervision by the mildly racy second scene, only to be turned off by the politics in the third.  (Daily Mail readers, the lot of them!)
This in turn set me thinking about how we read books, and whether we have a tendency to see them through to the end, even if we aren't enjoying them very much, or give up and move on to something more engaging.  I do tend to stick with a book once I'm a chapter or two into it - probably a habit instilled in my schooldays when 'set books' had to be read and 'appreciated', even if I found them utterly tedious and longed to be brave enough to say so.  No more exams; no more Jane-bloody-Austen!  I know some people will regard that a heresy, but I prefer my classic literature without a soundtrack of tinkling harpsichords.

If I get into a book with a forward-moving plot, I am inclined to speed-read to find out what happens next, only to feel guilty at the end of many a fine novel that I didn't give the writer more respect and take it at a pace to better appreciate their craft.  On the plus side, it does reduce the number of hours of your life you'll never get back from a highly disappointing book.  I'm reluctant to name names, though as an enthusiast for all things medieval and architectural feel a moral obligation to 'dis' Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth as a long-winded, pretentious and deeply unpleasant piece of melodrama, which I should never have started, let alone bothered finishing.  I had almost put it out of my mind until it turned up as a recommend on Goodreads.  Seriously, people - no!

However, I digress.  Much as I might question the motives of the Amazon loans policy, it favours writers of long sagas as long as we have engaged our readers with our cast of characters, so even if I could, I don't think I'd be taking industrial action over this!