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I find that I am rewriting all my backlist books so that they do indeed begin at the beginning. The first breakthrough was to realize that the copyright "page" needn't follow the title page but can just as easily go to the back of the book. Not only that, but I very soon began to see Big Six books doing the same thing. I don't remember now which ones they were, but they were from publishers like Random House, Doubleday, and the like.
In many books, I put the acknowledgements if any at the bottom of the copyright page.
In a more formal, academic text with the usual Prologue / Acknowledgements, I either rewrite the prologue so that it is a lead-in to chapter one or else I turn it into an Afterword, which follows Chapter N. If there is a Notes & Sources section, some of those acknowledgements might better fit there ("As always, I am indebted to my wife Belinda for her meticulous typing of drafts one through forty-two.")
My purpose in so doing was less to make life pleasant for Cybmole but rather to get best value out of Amazon's Look Inside the Book feature. It is a priceless sales tool.
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