![]() ![]() So, if a book’s copyright page says:Īs every publisher has their own ways of doing things, the above advice serves as a general rule, but doesn't always hold. The bottom line is beware of placing blind faith in the words "First Edition." Publishers occasionally/frequently (delete according to how charitable you're feeling) leave the "First Edition" or “First Printing” notation on the title page when ordering a new printing. Unless a collector is seeking to collect one copy of every book published within a certain year, we can assume there will be little interest in specific printings of the huge bestsellers likely to require this notation.Ĭopyright page for Allegiant by Veronica Roth (Harper Collins, 2013), which indicates the printing number on the right, and optimistically includes year notations on the left (anticipating many and rapid reprints for this hotly anticipated final book in the Divergent Trilogy).įor more information on methods of indicating first editions, see this informative article by ABAA-member Quill & Brush. Just to make things more confusing, some publishers add a year to the printing number (usually seen in best-sellers which were reprinted frequently - several times per year), leading to lines like this:Ĩ8 89 90 91 92 10 9 8 7 6 - meaning 6th printing in 1988 ![]() The unifying factor is that the lowest number indicates the printing, soģ 5 7 9 10 8 6 5 4 all indicate a 3rd printing.Ĭopyright page for The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon Books, 2013) indicating First United States Edition (original publication being in the UK, the author's home) and first printing using the number line with even numbers to the left and odd to the right. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 indicates a first printing, as do the same numbers in the opposite order, and oddly so does this configuration with the odd numbers on one side and the even on the other: By the later half of the 20th century (as the theory of “mass-market hardcovers” increased the sales numbers of hardcover books), many American and British publishers included a row of numbers on the copyright page to indicate printing:īut the order of these numbers varied by publisher. Some print the words "First Printing" on the copyright page of the true first printing, and remove the designation on subsequent printings - but not all do this. When western publishers began indicating printing numbers on the copyright page of their books in the mid-1900s, they adopted various methods. The best way to determine first printings of older books is by the date (usually on the title page), however the practices differed wildly between publishers in this period, so the best advice for pre-1900 books is to consult a reference guide (such as the ones listed at the end of this article) or simply to seek advice from an ABAA member.Ĭopyright page for The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (Little, Brown 2005) indicating a first edition (middle of the image) and first printing (number line at bottom). In general, books before 1900 did not indicate first or subsequent printings. How Can You Tell if a Book is a First Edition? (Witness the current trend to keep popular young-adult novels - Veronica Roth’s Allegiant and John Green's Turtles All the Way Down, for two recent examples - in hardcover for years, rather than replace the hardcover with a paperback edition a year after first publication.) (The ABAA glossary is a master of understatement when it says “ Every printed book has a first edition, many never have later editions.” For others, there might be dozens of printings, especially if a book becomes wildly successful. For a small press, this might be the only printing a book gets, so all copies are first edition, first printings. The first printing is the first batch of books printed from this first setting of type. One thing that distinguishes the book collector from the casual reader is a preference for owning first editions.Ī first edition is the format a book took when it was first made available for sale.įirst Edition: “All of the copies printed from the first setting of type can include multiple printings if all are from the same setting of type.”Ĭollectors distinguish between a first edition (the first printing of a book) and a modern first edition (which more-or-less applies to books printed from 1900 on - although, the exact definition is open to debate between dealers).
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