Okay, I concede your point about Dan Brown being a first timer. But since that was almost 20 years ago, is it really reflective of the current market? As for Ms. Chissick, it was her first novel, but not her first published book. I'm sure they cut her some slack because of that.
It's quite worrying that I can't find anything on my bookshelf that was an author's first time book but within the last ten years! But, I can't put my hands on my copy of Twilight (daughter's bedroom) but in my copy of Eclipse, there is a preface which I think is labelled incorrectly. A preface is usually a note from the author about how the book was conceived. But, the preface in Eclipse, is more of a vague snippet, something that grabs you and makes you want to read the story to find out what the character is talking about. And that is not a preface. But is it a prologue?? As for Chissick, her first published book was indeed, true life, a rather different genre to her first fiction novel which has a prologue. However, the difference in genre would mean she would've probably had different publishers, one for fiction, one for non-fiction which means she may not have been cut some slack for having a prologue in her first fiction. Incidentally, with Chissick, the point is kind of moot. She self-publishes, so she can pretty much do it the way she wants to.
