Almost everyone wants to read more books. Far fewer actually do. The gap is rarely about intelligence or love of reading — it’s about systems. If you want to read more books this year, you need three things working together: a daily habit, a faster reading pace, and the right material in front of you. Get those aligned and the number of books you finish climbs on its own.
Here’s how to build that system without pretending you’ll suddenly become a superhuman who devours a book a day.
Start With Math, Not Motivation
Motivation fades. Numbers don’t. So let’s do a little honest arithmetic.
The average adult reads at roughly 200–300 words per minute. A typical nonfiction book runs about 75,000 words. That means one book takes somewhere around 4 to 6 hours of actual reading time.
Now the encouraging part: you don’t need long sessions to get there.
| Daily reading | Words/min | Books per year (~75k words each) |
|---|---|---|
| 15 min | 250 | ~12 |
| 20 min | 300 | ~19 |
| 20 min | 450 | ~29 |
| 30 min | 400 | ~39 |
Two levers move that final column: minutes per day and words per minute. Push both a little and the results compound fast. Twenty focused minutes at a trained pace beats an hour of distracted skimming.
Build a Daily Reading Habit That Sticks
Consistency beats intensity. A person who reads 15 minutes every day will out-read someone who binges for three hours one Sunday a month and then forgets about it.
A few tactics that actually work:
- Anchor it to an existing habit. Read right after your morning coffee, or during your commute, or the moment you get into bed. Attaching the new habit to a stable one makes it far more likely to stick.
- Lower the bar to something you can’t refuse. Commit to one page, not one chapter. Once you start, you’ll usually keep going — but on hard days, one page still counts and protects the streak.
- Keep the book visible. A book on your nightstand gets read. A book in a drawer does not. Same goes for your phone: keep your reading app on your home screen.
- Protect the streak. There’s real psychology behind not wanting to break a chain of consecutive days. This is exactly why Acceleread uses streaks — the pull to keep a run alive is one of the most reliable motivators in habit design.
The goal isn’t a heroic week. It’s a boring, repeatable daily minimum you’ll still be doing in November.
Read Faster — Without Wrecking Comprehension
Faster reading is the second lever, and it’s the one most people ignore. The average adult never gets past the pace they had in high school. But reading speed is a trainable skill, not a fixed trait.
Realistically, with practice most people can reach 400–600 WPM while keeping solid comprehension. That’s not a magic trick — and be skeptical of anyone promising 10,000 WPM. Genuine reading at those speeds isn’t supported by the evidence; what’s really happening is skimming, and comprehension collapses.
So what actually makes you faster? A few well-studied habits:
- Reduce subvocalization. That inner voice sounding out every word caps you at roughly speaking speed. Quieting it (not eliminating it) lets your eyes move ahead.
- Cut regressions. Re-reading the same line over and over is often just wandering attention, not genuine confusion. Training helps your eyes move forward with intent.
- Widen your perceptual span. Skilled readers take in more words per fixation, so they make fewer stops per line.
These are the exact mechanics that structured drills target. Techniques like RSVP (flashing words one at a time to pace your eyes) and Schulte tables (widening your visual field) are the backbone of most training apps, Acceleread included. If you want the full breakdown, our guide on how to read faster goes deeper, and the science page covers what the research does and doesn’t support.
The key rule: always pair speed work with comprehension checks. Faster reading you don’t remember isn’t reading — it’s page-turning.
Choose Books You’ll Actually Finish
The most overlooked reading skill is choosing well. Half of “not reading enough” is really “stuck on the wrong book.”
- Quit freely. You are not obligated to finish a book you’re not enjoying. Abandoning a dud isn’t failure — it frees you to start something you’ll race through. Finished books are what count, and momentum matters more than completionism.
- Match difficulty to the moment. Dense, technical books deserve slow, careful reading. Save your trained speed for narrative nonfiction and fiction where flow is your friend.
- Stack a queue. The gap between finishing one book and starting the next is where reading habits die. Always have the next book ready to go.
- Mix formats. Ebooks, audiobooks, and print all count. Audiobooks on a walk plus print at night can quietly double your throughput.
A little planning here removes the friction that quietly kills reading streaks.
Put It Together
Reading more books this year isn’t about willpower or a dramatic lifestyle overhaul. It’s a simple, repeatable loop:
- Read daily — even 15 minutes, anchored to a habit you already have.
- Read faster — train down subvocalization and regressions to reach a sustainable 400–600 WPM.
- Read the right things — queue books you’ll finish, and quit the ones you won’t.
- Track your streak — let momentum do the motivating.
Do all four and the numbers take care of themselves. A reader who goes from 250 to 400 WPM and reads 20 minutes a day doesn’t just read a few more books — they can roughly double their yearly total.
Curious where you’re starting from? Take our free reading speed test to see your current WPM and comprehension in a couple of minutes. It’s the first step to reading faster — and finishing more of the books you’ve been meaning to get to.
Ready to build the habit? See how Acceleread works or explore the training features that turn “read more” into a daily streak you’ll actually keep.
