If you query a publisher and they invite you to send in the first three chapters of your manuscript, please just do it! There have been several authors whose queries interested me so I asked for the first three chapters, only to have the authors balk, begging to send chapters from the middle of their book because the first three chapters aren't "representative of their work"! Well I've got news for you, if you haven't engaged the reader within the first three chapters then you have colossally failed as an author. When people are browsing for a book to buy, they don't crack open the middle of the book to check it out, they start reading the first chapter, and if it doesn't draw them in pretty quickly, they put it right back on the shelf. Whenever an author isn't happy with sending me only the first three chapters, I immediately see that as a red flag that they don't have faith in their own work.
markprobst
Comments
Having said that, as a reader I've noticed that a lot of the books I buy in the shops have fantastic beginnings and then by the fourth chapter in they start to go radically downhill, so I always do check the middle and the end now before I buy.
By the same token, if it's a publisher I've been with for a while, that's a whole other story. :P
~Tis
I've got to the age that if a book doesn't grab me in the first chapter and a half it goes back to the library/down to the charity shop. Life's too short!
I'm with Charlie... I used to feel obliged to read a book all the way through, but a chapter or so is as much as I'm willing to be bored with anymore. There's got to be something worth reading right away.
Yikes.
I'm so sorry, but I can't send my first three chapters because they represent post-apocalyptic horror. I'm writing a western. How about I just send the middle? That's when it starts to represent a western and, really, is the only part you should publish. I hope that won't be a problem.
Regards,
A Few Pickles Short of a Full Barrel