A Fantasy novel always has a Prologue.   Well, nearly always.  It's a genre rule which you break at your peril.  A Prologue comes straight after the Map and just before Chapter 1.  Just use the mnemonic MPC1: Map, Prologue, Chapter 1.  Simple.  You can't go wrong.

Or can you?

Based on some of the advice and discussions on various forums about Prologues, you can go horribly horribly wrong.  Apparently many people don't read Prologues.  I don't know if that's true (personally I'm of the start-reading-at-the-beginning school of thought), but skipping these introductory sections seems to be accepted wisdom among the writing community.   Literary Agents definitely ignore Prologues, I'm told, so if you want to be a successful writer, you need to shun them like lepers (err Prologues, that is, not Literary Agents).

Prologues are only red herring hooks designed to reel the reader in, but without adding anything to the story.  They are camouflage for a weak first chapter.  They will be forgotten and irrelevant once the reader is deep into the story.  They are there to dump huge piles of info or back story on the reader which would otherwise slow down the main narrative.

Allegedly.

Sorry, but I love Prologues.  Especially in Fantasy novels.  I usually trust the writer that, even if they appear unconnected to the main narrative, they will eventually make sense.  I have no problem if they are long, if they are set in different time period to Chapter 1 or if they contain back story.  I particularly don't care if they are designed to hook me.  Come and get me, I say.  Do your best!

All three of my Books of Ascension have chapter-length Prologues which feature a central event in the life of one of the main characters when they were nine years old.  The main action in each book then starts off in Chapter 1 nine years later.  I actually love Prologues so much I even have a Prologue to each of these Prologues – small hook-type sections that I've called "The First Book", "The Second Book" and "The Lost Book".

So, I've broken almost every rule about Prologues (they don't even follow a map because I don't have a map – but I'll save that for another blog).  So, just a warning to all those alleged readers out there who ignore Prologues (you know who you are, even if I don't), if you skip over the Prologues in Zenith, Equinox and Eclipse, you're going to miss crucial parts of the story.  Don't come crying to me that something jumped up at you out of the blue late in the third book.  I'll just shake make head, and say I did warn you.  Why not start at the beginning?  In fact, why not start right now?

How much do you charge for a digital book in this new publishing world we live in?  In the days when print was the only show in town, it was a lot simpler.  You had paper. printing, binding, warehousing and transport costs, and you had to make sure these were covered by the price you charged.  Nowadays, these substantial costs have effectively been reduced to zero, so it's a lot easier to publish at very low prices without losing money.

But how low do you go?

Is 99 cents too cheap for an eBook?  What about the year's work that may have gone into it.  You can't get a cup of copy for that price.  Surely a book is worth more than a  cup of coffee that takes 5 minutes to drink?

On the other hand, how does an individual writer get read with all the world's books only a couple of a clicks away for any reader?  With so much choice, why would anyone spend lots of money on a writer they're not familiar with?

A new  theory on how business on the internet works called The Curve addresses this dilemma   The writer basically argues that it makes no sense to have uniform prices anymore and that there should be many different variations of the product priced along a curve starting from the very cheap or even free.  It's a bit like the old hardback/paperback model in some ways but with infinitely more flexibility and points of difference.

Macmillan Momentum have applied this model to my recently published Books of Ascension trilogy.  Although each of the three books are more or less the same length, Zenith is $1.00, Equinox is $2.99, and  Eclipse $4.99.   You can see the curve at work here, and I think it makes sense for both the reader and the author.  Readers can try the first book without having to worry about outlaying too much, and they will only pay the higher price for the subsequent books if they are enjoying the series (which means it's good value for money for them).  Of course, the author (err... me, in this case) is hoping that without a price barrier, many readers will cross the threshold into a world that they wouldn't have otherwise entered, and a large percentage of them will enjoy the experience enough to trek further.

The curve is waiting.  Are you ready to ascend?