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Wednesday, November 13, 2013

First Edition, First Printing

Thanks to Caroline Starr Rose's great blog, I've been trying to figure out the whole number of printings thing. I'm sure I knew this at some point in my librarian/ reader/ writer career. But only when Caroline blogged about it did I decide to read up on the whole Printing vs. Edition thing.

(Thank you, Caroline, for filling my afternoon with great googling and little writing. But it was fun!)

Here's a good explanation of how to find which printing a book's in:

http://www.travelinlibrarian.info/writing/editions/#prfa

And if you're a potential book collector, this might be helpful.
http://bookriot.com/2012/11/08/the-beginners-guide-to-identifying-first-editions-part-one/ 

I can't resist sharing an image from that link, above. 
I believe this is the copyright page from THE HELP. 
Do note how many printings that book's in...

 

That would be #56. And it was over a year ago. 
We should all be so lucky.

3 comments:

Caroline Starr Rose said...

Okay, you are super cool. I have to link this to my post xo

Augusta Scattergood said...

You were my inspiration, Caroline!

Augusta Scattergood said...

Just today, via Facebook, the question came up. Re: What constitutes a Second Edition.

Here's Harold Underdown: Technicallly, there should be content changes. My Idiot's Guide is now on the third edition, and we added and revised each time. But there can be considerable debate as to what qualifies as a new edition.... CMS might have some guidelines.

And further to James McCann's point, a true (collectible) first edition is the first printing of the first edition.