Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page. In a customarily formatted book manuscript with chapters starting about 1/3 of the way down the page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type), there are 16 or 17 lines on the first page.

Here’s the question:

Would you pay good money to read the rest of the chapter? With 50 chapters in a book that costs $15, each chapter would be “worth” 30 cents.

So, before you read the excerpt, take 30 cents from your pocket or purse. When you’re done, decide what to do with those three dimes or the quarter and a nickel. It’s not much, but think of paying 30 cents for the rest of the chapter every time you sample a book’s first page.

Please judge by storytelling quality, not by genre or content—some reject an opening page immediately because of genre, but that’s not a good enough reason when the point is to analyze for storytelling strength.

This novel was number one on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list for March 20, 2016. How strong is the opening page—would this narrative, all on its own, have hooked an agent if it came in from an unpublished writer? Following are what would be the first 17 manuscript lines of the prologue.

Chest-deep in a ditch, an Italian pick and shovel man looked up at a rush of custom-made shoes and broadcloth trousers inches from his face. Rich American students were scooping handfuls from the earth pile and sifting the sandy red soil through their fingers.

The Irish foreman, seated in the shade of an umbrella, shook a fist at him.

“Back to work, you lazy dago!”

The students took no notice. Set loose from geology class for impromptu field study, they were examining the fresh-dug outwash for traces of Triassic rock that glaciers had ground from the highlands above the New Haven valley. They were happy to be out of doors this first warm day of spring, and Italians digging holes in the ground were as ordinary a sight as red-faced Irish foremen in derby hats.

But the Italians’ padrone, the labor contractor the immigrants paid a stiff commission for the day’s work, did notice. The padrone was an extravagantly clad and perfumed Neopolitan with a sharp eye for profit. He beckoned the laborer who had stopped work to gape at his betters— a young Sicilian who called himself Antonio Branco.

Antonio Branco vaulted effortlessly up onto the grass. His clothes reeked of sweat, and little distinguished him from the others toiling in the ditch. Just another peasant in a dirty cap, a little finer-featured than most, taller, and bigger in the shoulders. And yet, something about this (snip)

This is The Gangster by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott, number 6 in a series. Was this opening page compelling to you?

My vote: no.

For me, this falls into the close-but-no-thirty-cents category. The situation is interesting, for sure, but I didn’t find it compelling, and that’s the hurdle—would this prologue opening be strong enough to captivate a literary agent if this came in the slush pile?

Why not? As usual, no story question. No hint as to what the story is about. Yes, the title gives that, but the narrative is all setup that lacks the what-happens-next tension that a truly riveting story well told generates in me. So I kept my 30 cents.

Your thoughts?

Turn the page for free by utilizing Amazon’s “Look inside” feature, and I recommend doing that if you have the time and interest. The Gangster is here.

Stop by my Monday “Flog a BookBubber” feature Flogging the Quill. BookBub is a website that offers free or very low cost ebooks. It is heavily used by self-publishers, though established authors are sometimes there.

We often see the meme on the Internet that self-published authors should have had editing done before they published. So Flog a BookBubber posts take a look at opening pages to see if that’s true. You can vote on turning the page and then on whether or not they should have sought an editor. Visit on Mondays and take a look.

Read a prologue that works: In a recent Flog a BookBubber post I discovered a prologue in a free book that, unlike today’s sample, did get me to turn the page. Check it out.