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My opinion is it comes down largely to childhood written language education. I believe we read faster if we got a deep vocabulary and thorough understanding of sentence structure. I was, um, blessed with teachers who continued to hammer the fundamentals year after year. I was also corrected by two very literate parents (mom taught English).
I'm sure there are also organic reasons why some people are better at language than others but I remember working hard at those reading-for-comprehension exercises in grade school. These were stories printed on cards with questions to answer after reading, color coded for difficulty.
Chicken or egg? Proably both, some natural talent that was nurtured.
I college I taught both reading and speed reading professionally. After that I did volunteer literacy tutoring, on and off. I do not recommend speed reading techniques for anyone who wants to enjoy what they read. They are designed to extract comprehension but tend to strip or gloss over any artistic content in the material.
My best general tip is to work on vocabulary so that you recognize more words at a glance. Even today I still work on vocabulary. I love that my e-reader has instant dictionary access.
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