When you are submitting your 'first three chapters' where does a prologue stand? Do you include it, or only submit the prologue and the first two chapters?
When you are submitting your 'first three chapters' where does a prologue stand? Do you include it, or only submit the prologue and the first two chapters?
It depends if you really like the prologue and think that the agent/publisher would as well.
As far as I know, you aren't obliged to send the FIRST 3 chapters. You send 3 chapters to convince the agent/publisher that you can sustain interest over that length. If so, it's reasonable to suppose that you can sustain interest for a whole book.
However, perhaps agents prefer to judge the beginning of a book, because if the first chapter is boring, nobody's going to continue reading the book until those 3 excellent chapters that you sent as a sample.
If your prologue grabs the reader's (in this case, the agent's) attention and the first 2 "real" chapters deliver on that promise, I'd go for that option.
If the prologue is very short, you could always send the 3rd chapter in a separate attachment, inviting the agent to read it if the interest is there.