One issue for any book is coherence. There's a lot of ways that's accomplished, but one is that from start to end the book encompasses a coherent period of time. Usually that's simply precipitating event to grand conclusion, but there are other ways.

For example, if the story takes place on a vacation, it might start with the first day of the vacation. The Fault in Our Stars in a way starts with the main character's first interaction with Gus, and ends with her last interaction with him. That gives the book coherence.

The reader won't be able to judge coherence just by reading the start of the book. So it's not a big factor for selling a book. And it's a subtle factor for readers.

Contract With the Reader

I think temporal coherence is a part of the writer's contract with the reader. It's part of the underlying idea of Story. There is a timeline, from the first event in a book until the last. The author is obligated to guide the reader through this time line, making sure the order of events is clear. If the author wants to jump forward in time, these jumps must, one way or another, be clear.

Clause two of this contract is that nothing important happens in the time that is jummped over.

Take, for example, Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck could have begun that story with them being chased out of town and forced to go somewhere else. Instead, he started with them entering their camping place for the night. When he did that, he was free of any obligation to fill in the events of the past, or explain their temporal order.

There is a loophole in your contract with the reader: You are allowed to take one event from the past, no matter how far it is off the time line, and present it first as a prologue. Unfortunately, writers don't honor that contract; I have discussed the use of prologue just to have an interesting start. Given the likelihood of a prologue containing a spoiler, I would recommend that readers also not honor that contract.

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