Editors are more concerned with the first chapters of a book; that's what everyone reads first in the bookstore or in the online sample.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Many first-time novelists end up rewriting their first two or three chapters, trying to get them 'just right.' But the point of the first draft is not to get it right; it's to get it written - so that you'll have something to work with.
I treated the first few books as a very long journalistic exercise. I thought of every chapter as an article that needed to be finished.
When you write the first book of a series, you do have to be careful what you put in because then you are stuck with it.
The first audience that you have when writing a book is you.
Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective.
A good part of the work is just reading a manuscript and coming to the office. I can't imagine wanting to even read an article about book publishing.
I'm very troubled when editors oblige their film critics to read the novel before they see the film. Reading the book right before you see the film will almost certainly ruin the film for you.
Few are sufficiently sensible of the importance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order of books. Why, except for some special reason, read an inferior book, at the very time you might be reading one of the highest order?
Reading is a free practice. I think the readers are free to begin by the books where they want to. They don't have to be led in their reading.
The audiobooks I buy are never first-time reads - only rereadings of books I know well that I find intoxicating.