How Many Pages to Read Before You Know it Sucks?

I recall this as a response to another of the blog posts of the ill fated Leurcota Press.

The blogger had asked how many pages to give a novel before you put it down and made a few more comments. I had answered out of having something to do with what little energy I had at my disposal.

Another, and if I recall correctly, the main point was that the writer had run across a web posting of the first chapters of a few books and felt that the first chapter simply wasn’t enough to go on.

 23^rd January 2011

The first time I ran across this myself was in the back of a novel and it had excerpts from the author’s other books. I think it started as something where you had to have a few things going in order for you to get that printing time. That was before the internet got as big as it is and bandwidth got cheaper.

Still, it was a mass print thing. It included an excerpt from the book I was reading so it couldn’t have been printed for the book and I don’t think it even had page numbers. It comes from print and so is a print tradition.

Further down your line of thought, giving a book fifty pages isn’t a bad idea and there are a few books I lost interest in at the half way point. If you’re reading for recreation then just read as much as you feel like. Never force yourself to read something without good reason.

In this age of the internet we can look up book reviews left and right and hear about what the masses think every now and again. Then, I’ve read at least one “New York Times Best Seller” that made me want to puke.

Another point is that if a first chapter is too overloaded with facts then the story probably isn’t very accessible. Most people don’t sit down and read a novel. They read it over days, weeks, or even months. They don’t always stop reading at a chapter end either so they should be able to pick up where they left off without too much trouble.

First chapter: why not? It’s more than nothing.