The Perils of Prologues

The verdict is in— readers do not care for prologues. Some won’t read any section marked ‘prologue,’ others, looking at the sample section of a book on Amazon, won’t even buy a book that starts with a prologue.

Why are prologues so shunned? Look at some older fantasy novels. They start with a prologue that introduces you to the story-world with an info-dump about the worlds’ history cleverly written in the style of the most boring sort of history text. Is that a good way to hook a reader? Not really.

Many of us readers might want the information from the info-dump prologue, but not in the place of an exciting story-start. This info can be gathered as an appendix in the back of the book. Small doses of it might actually be worked into the action of the story.

In addition to the info-dump prologue, there is another kind that tells part of the main story. Often the word ‘prologue’ means we are dealing with a part of the story that is earlier in time.

Think of the beginning of the Harry Potter series— Harry is a baby whose parents have just been murdered by ‘You-Know-Who,’ and Dumbledore must arrange that Harry be handed over to his Aunt Petunia. Then the story jumps forward to when Harry’s old enough to go to Hogwarts.

This kind of prologue is often best handled by not calling it a prologue. Just call it ‘Chapter One’ and prologue haters and skippers won’t notice.

Another kind of prologue is the horror novel kind. It introduces a random character about to be killed by the ‘big bad’ of the story. This prologue provides a horror-thrill, and often is a motivation for the true main character to be drawn into the story— investigating the murder/disappearance.

Calling this opening a ‘prologue’ may be the author’s way to signal to the reader not to get attached to the doomed character. But horror readers already know about the sacrificial character beginning. Perhaps for some, identifying with this doomed character as a potential Lead character is part of the horror-thrill. Again, this may be a time to call your prologue ‘Chapter One.’

In my own current WIP, a science fiction novel set among nomadic colonists of a world just Terra formed, the initial section of the story takes place seven years before much of the rest of the story. But I don’t plan to use the P-word to mark off that temporally earlier section. That would just encourage readers to skip ahead for no reason.

So— what do you do about the prologue issue? How do you avoid the temptation to write an info-dump prologue that scares off some readers. Have you ever written a prologue and just not called it that?

Writing Book Promotions for Social Media

I admit it– I got started on social media all those years ago to have a way to promote books. Though what I’ve seen of most book promotions on social media make me reluctant to do it.

Promoting your books through promos on social media says some things about you as a writer. It says you are probably self-published or very-small-press published, that your books don’t sell as well as you’d like, and that you have money woes enough that you are trying to get ‘free advertising’ on social media.

If you post clumsy or cheesy book promos, the likely conclusion is that you are not a good writer. If you feel the need to do book promos, make them good ones!

Social media is for communicating in a personal way. If you are not James Patterson, don’t post something like an objective ad James Patterson’s publisher would spend money on.

When I have purchased books after having seen them mentioned on social media, I don’t pick any old books. I pick books of authors I have a personal connection with on a social medium. Be yourself, be relatable!

Another important point is to give specific details about the book in question. Posting your possibly not-so-great book cover plus a buy link is not enough.

Randy Ingermanson recommends that you come up with an appealing one-sentence description of your book. I’d suggest writing many, and keeping the best.

Your book description must be specific. If you are not sure what ‘specific’ is, look that word up in a dictionary. You don’t want a book description that fits hundreds of other books.

Your book description should give a reader a clue about what genre or subgenre a book is. But don’t be afraid to add the specific words. Some people won’t consider your book if they mistakenly think it is a murder mystery and not a paranormal romance.

Book price matters are much less of a draw these days. It doesn’t matter if your eBook is free this week if you are a poor writer.

Your social media accounts shouldn’t be about you advertising at people. It should be a way for you to make connections with other people. You should be posting loads of non-book-promo things on your social media accounts, if you want to draw enough of a following to sell a book or two that way.