Best First Page of Any Book Ever?

The title is such a cliche.

Then, everything in the first page goes south the more you read it. This book is beyond bad. I wonder why would anyone even bother to publish this book?

I’m going to guess (wildly) that this is a self-published book, because any self-respecting editor would have thrown this in the garbage and not even bothered to fix it. But that’s just me, assuming again…

This is maybe the best first page in a norwegian book. “Hunger” written by Knut Hamsun in 1890:)

http://books.google.com/books?id=pXYRK0789mcC&lpg=PR1&ots=5caIwCX0CY&dq=hunger%20knut%20hamsun&hl=no&pg=PA1

I can’t believe that went so far over your head…wow! funny stuff ;)

what is so great or funny about it?

Was this written by a 12 year old? I could write better stuff than that..

This is why 10 year old boys should not have computers. Come back when you learn to spell, punctuate, and THINK! Other than that, it’s pretty, er, terrible.

What’s the name of the book? That’s some pretty funny stuff

The Amazon reviews are even better! Did someone hack into Amazon and upload fake reviews? I was just starting to trust the reviews there, and now this ….

anybody got a better first page?
The Hobbit is up there.

gotta cast mine for The Gunslinger

Sarcasm, people, sarcasm.

Of COURSE this is the result of the self-publishing explosion.
Golly, gee, I can write and publish my own book! And it’ll be set in type, just like a real book! With a real cover, and real chapters, and . . . and . . . and . . .

“It was a dark and stormy night” is my favorite opening line of all time. There is none better…long live Snoopy and his precious Van Gogh. My favorite opening for a television show is Dark Shadows – in black and white – great music, great graphics just beautifully over the top.

A word about Xlibris. They are in the business to bill authors. They do have a copy editing service but that also costs money. This author probably spent a couple of grand to put this book out. It’s unfortunate that he trusted Xlibris.

When I used Xlibris for my novel “Journey Home” I submitted the book in the electronic format they directed me to use. When I received the first galley it was butchered.

A lot of Dale’s Moon mistakes very easily could have come from the Xlibris format conversion process. However our Moon author should have poured over the galley. He should have never signed off on it until it was a right as could be and had a second pair of eyes look for mistakes.

It took me 27 iterations to get my galley right. There are still some apostrophes missing but after being reduced to tears and frustrated beyond belief I got the book close enough and signed off on the 27th galley. I kid you not.

Those 27 rounds of corrections also cost me money. Every time I would submit a correction a new one would crop up where there hadn’t been one before. My customer support people all spoke English as a second language. It was an unbelievable struggle. Characters names literally appeared inside of words.

For instance the word America came back to me in the galley’s as “AmeriBenca” and not just once but replicated throughout the whole book. There’s a form and format to complete and fill out for each mistake. Ben is one of the characters in the book. That’s just one example the formatting fiasco was rampant. You want to talk tortured artist talk to me.

I muscled it through and in the end it was worth it but not financially. Although “Journey Home” has received glowing reviews from anyone who has read it (and that in and of itself is over the top rewarding) the lack of a Simon and Schuster pushing it has made the marketing of it a huge struggle. Who knows if Xlibris is reporting back to me the actual number of sales based on incompetence more than any real intent to rip me off. Some fun, ehh?

But in the end the book is out there now finally for the curious and open minded to find…..and so you never know and keep the faith.

Paul
Author-Journey Home

See, this right here is why self-publishing shouldn’t exist. No one needs to read this. This may or may not be a good story, but it needs a ghostwriter, proofreader and editor. Or just to be thrown in the fireplace. Either way.