contractual relationships
But this pressure on the first paragraphs of the novel starts long before that casual meeting in the bookstore -- it starts when the person you hope will be your agent picks up the manuscript and gives the story its first professional audition. Some agents will give any manuscript only the most cursory of looks; others are more willing to spend a little time figuring out if there's a story s/he can sell.
But jumping forward, for the moment, to the potential reader standing there in the bookstore with your novel in her hands. She might have picked it up because she liked the cover, or the title, or just because she's browsing and she's picking up on book after another. She picks it up though she doesn't recognize your name. Maybe she picks it up because you've got a good blurb from a big name or a good review, but those are all just come-ons. The real test is the first paragraph, or, if she's the patient, thoughtful type, the first page or two. She's reading the start of a story, but she's also looking at a contract.
As the author, you set up a whole slew of expectations/obligations in the first pages. You've got just those few minutes. You're saying: take a chance. See, I can write a good sentence, I've got characters you'll like or love to hate. Take a chance. Run away with me.
If the match is good, she may buy the book and take it home and find a good chair and read. The love affair that started in the bookstore may blossom; she may stay in that chair reading until her eyes refuse to go along with her self destructive behavior and insist she go to bed. Or the relationship may start to pale quite quickly. Maybe she'll put the book down after the first chapter wondering if she finished the last of yesterday's soup and never come back to it. Maybe she'll pick it up tomorrow, or next week, and work her way through it out of a sense of obligation (she spent money, after all). Maybe the book will get lost in the cushions and a year from now she'll find it and think, huh? I have no memory of buying this. Wonder what it's about. Or: that was a waste of money. Or: I should give this another try, I wasn't in the right place back then for another story about a teenager acting out because of a hostile father.
This whole dynamic has changed, a little, with on-line bookstores. Often you can't read the first pages, or if you can, it's hard to manage technically and so you depend on reviews from newspapers and other readers. But in a bookstore, this old contract-dance still happens. I've watched it happen, with my own books. I've watched people pick up Homestead or Lake in the Clouds or one of the other books, look at the cover, read the blurbs, turn to the first page. Put it down and walk away, or get distracted because a child is asking for Curious George. I haven't seen this many times. Maybe five or six total. I do know that only twice I saw the person take the book to the counter and pay for it. I think 6:2 is actually pretty good, but I don't know, for sure. What I would like to be able to do is stop the person who put the book back down and ask, politely, so, what is it that made you decide against that novel? Just out of curiosity? But I can't do that, because almost certainly it will come out that I'm the author, and that would be really embarrassing. Nerdy to the nth degree embarrassing.
I could tell Author X why I read the first paragraph of his or her novel and then put it down, if s/he really wanted to know. Usually what I would say would be something like: at this moment, the voice didn't strike me as what I'm looking for.
Because authors have voices that speak from the page, and that's a topic for another post.