How to keep a reader interested with nothing more than a promise?

Yeah, that's a whole book's worth of another mundane story that takes a weird turn at the end. What are you going to fill book 1 with? If the fantasy action only really starts when they get to Reiss, start with the beginning of that adventure.

Additionally, publishing such a story would be quite hard -- a trade publisher would probably reject it out of hand, and self-publishing might get some initial takers, but as VOA says, once the bad reviews start rolling in, you're stuffed.

I can't see any reason not to start with two mundane guys arriving in Reiss. Or, to be blunt, I'd prefer to read about Reiss itself as a standalone world. It could have similarities (e.g. geography) to Earth if you wanted that kind of story, but what about characters from Reiss stumbling across Earth? That's something that sounds way more interesting and more likely to hold someone's attention for a while before the protagonists discover the other half of their world (although still probably not a whole book) rather than the other way around.

/r/fantasywriters Thread