Just going to comment on the Piers Anthony thing: if you've spent any time at all on a literary agent's blog, you'll know they often don't read past the first few paragraphs or even beyond a query letter. Usually, they can tell just from how those are written whether the story will be any good (tight writing, interesting plot, the author knows what to focus on in a summary, etc.). Their thinking runs thus: the first page is the first thing a potential reader looks at when they pick up a book in a store, and most writers know this and craft their first five pages better than the rest of the book; if the first page sucks, generally the rest of the book will suck even harder.
Just going to comment on the Piers Anthony thing: if you've spent any time at all on a literary agent's blog, you'll know they often don't read past the first few paragraphs or even beyond a query letter. Usually, they can tell just from how those are written whether the story will be any good (tight writing, interesting plot, the author knows what to focus on in a summary, etc.). Their thinking runs thus: the first page is the first thing a potential reader looks at when they pick up a book in a store, and most writers know this and craft their first five pages better than the rest of the book; if the first page sucks, generally the rest of the book will suck even harder.