18 Pages

How many books do you own that you’ve only half read? Check your bookcase. I’ll wait.

Did you know most people don’t get past page 18 in the books they buy? They lose interest. And many of these books are amazing books – best sellers. That’s why people buy them. But those first 18 pages lost the reader’s attention.

It doesn’t matter if the story was incredible – life changing. The reader will never experience it because the writer lost the reader’s attention.

We have such limited time that people give us. Will you piqué their interest in that time? Or will you lose them?

I often skip over what I later to find to be my favorite song, simply because it took too long to get started. I often tune out in a lecture that others find life changing because the speaker didn’t bother to grab my attention. I often eject the Blu-ray in the first 15 minutes because the moviemaker lost me.

Even though those may all be artistic masterpieces, they won’t be appreciated. Those first 18 pages are critical.

What is the “first 18 pages” in your art? Identify it. Are you grabbing your audience’s attention during that critical time? Or are you losing them?

[Photo Props]