Printings, Editions, and How to Brag About Your Books
Finding Joy in What We Don't Understand
I love learning (and also teaching). But even more, I love the realization that comes before the learning starts. When I look at some process or object and realize I have no idea what it does or how it does it, even if I can infer that it is doing something, somehow.
I wonder if anyone ever has that realization while looking at the copyright page of their books. But, hold that thought for a moment.
Welcome back to the Cubicle At the End of the Galaxy. This week, we’re unpacking that strange page of text and number strings in the front of your books, otherwise known as the copyright page. Specifically, how can it identify the rarity (and possible value) of your books?
Pick up and open the nearest book to you and within the first few pages, you’ll likely find a copyright page. Something that looks like this:
The copyright page serves a variety of purposes and has become the catch-all page for different permissions, notices, and references about a book’s development. But the main purpose is to convey who has ownership of the underlying story, “the copyright”.
All of that is worth unpacking and exploring in its own right, but today we’re going to focus on using the copyright page to identify the “age” of your book and potentially, its relative rarity or value.
But before we do that, we need to talk about the difference between the edition of a book, and one of its printings.
Printings vs Editions:
“All of my books are first editions.” You’ve probably heard this, and on its face, it sounds super impressive. And sometimes, it is impressive. But for the vast majority of published books, it isn’t. There’s a decent chance that most novels that you currently own are first editions. And *most* books never get more than one edition.1
What that person should more likely be bragging about is which of their books are “first printings”. And in certain cases, which of their books are “first edition, first printings” also colloquial known as “first firsts.” Yes, we’re really entering word salad territory, so let’s break out some definitions.
Edition all copies of a book printed from the same typesetting** of the text of a book.
** typesetting is merely the process of arranging text into a formal layout for printing. So when a book goes from being a Word doc to being in a layout with margins, proper headers, and all that. That’s the typesetting.
Printing is all copies of a book printed in a batch, from the same edition. 2
An edition may have many printings, but a printing belongs to a single edition.
Let’s do a simple illustration before continuing, just to make things as clear as possible. Imagine we have an author, Dex, who is about to publish a book. For the initial release, we print 1000 copies. All 1000 copies are FIRST EDITIONS and constitute the FIRST PRINTING.
The book goes on sale and is successful (hooray Dex). So, we print 2000 more books. We make no changes to the book, we just hit print. Those 2000 additional copies are also part of the FIRST EDITION, but they are now the SECOND PRINTING.
So How Does a Book Get a New Edition?
A book only changes editions if the text undergoes “significant changes” before reprinting. What does significant changes mean? It can vary, but generally, it means enough changes to require a new typesetting. In publishing, we call this “resetting” the text. Things that would create a new edition:
Addition or subtraction of chapters, or scenes in the text.
Adding new material like significant footnotes, illustrations, or annotations.
The addition of an introduction, foreword, or new epilogue.
Things that won’t create a new edition:
Fixing typos or small printing errors.
Changing the book cover.
To return to our example - If no significant changes are ever made, we can keep reprinting batches of Dex’s book forever, and every single batch would be just a new printing of the FIRST EDITION. So, if you own Dex’s book and say “I have a first edition”, that’s not really all that special, since thousands or even millions of copies of it could exist. But if you say “I have one of the first printings”, well that’s another matter, because we only made 1,000 of those!
(First editions also exist across formats and different publishers. The first time a book goes from hardcover to paperback, or the first edition published in the USA if the book was originally a UK book.)
Identifying The Printing and Edition of Your Book
With some definitions down, let’s finally get to the whole point of this newsletter.3 Which brings us back to the copyright page.
Some copyright pages, like this one for Mister Magic will outright identify the edition of a book (how convenient). This is up to publisher preference, like most things in publishing there’s no one rule or standard. If a book doesn’t explicitly state its edition, you can identify that in a few ways. The easiest way is to look and see if there is more than 1 copyright date.
This copyright page, from A Rabble in Arms has multiple, meaning this book is a second edition (though this publisher chose to identify it as the “first illustrated edition”. ) Again, publishing is weird and standards vary.
That covers editions, but what about printings? Well for that, we look near the bottom of the copyright page at the strange string of numbers, that may appear random but are not. This string is called a printer’s key.
This key is our printing reference. And you read them by looking for the lowest number in the string. Since we find a “1” in this string, that means it is the first printing.
When books are reprinted, the copyright page is tweaked and the previous printing number is removed. As in this 3rd printing, which has added a 10 for future printing.
And on this string, we have a 5th printing (zero in this case, also means 10).
Once a book gets close to the end of a set of 10 printings, you’ll usually see the number string reset or future printing numbers added. It’s rare to just see a string with a singular “9” on a ninth printing.
(The letter or letters you see before the printer key is an abbreviation to identify the specific printer the publisher used.)
You may have noticed the number strings can appear in a few different ways. The three most common orientations are:
123456789
987654321
246897531
What’s the reason for this? One is just publisher preference, but the reason you often see the third option (24689…) is that it keeps the number string symmetrical, lowest number alternates from the right and left side. So when we remove the 1, and eventually the 2, the string remains roughly centered in the layout.
The other reason for this particular string is most likely that back when books were “impressed” with engraving blocks and plates were made of each page, it wasn’t possible to add to a plate once it was made. But you could rub off something to remove it. Putting the numbers on the outside, made that easier. That it continues to be used today is just another example of a publishing tradition that endures long after it was strictly required.
This is how identifying printings works generally, but (again because publishing is weird) it can always get more complicated or have exceptions. Sometimes, a publisher will arrange their printer’s key with two strings. As in this copy of Zeroes by Chuck Wendig
In this case, the first string indicates the year of the printing, and the second string after the printer abbreviation is the specific printing, but we read it the same way. This is the first printing, printed in 2015.
Isn’t All of This a Bit Pedantic?
Well yes, sort of. But if you collect books, pedantry can mean a lot or cost you a lot. And since “first edition” means something on its own, you can’t just assume it also encompasses first printing (sometimes it will). Some collectors even intentionally use these terms interchangeably, which I find strange and disingenuous. And if you are collecting, be specific about what you’re looking for.
Plus, we’re talking about publishing. Words matter.
So does that mean that “first edition” is entirely overblown and always worthless, or even misleading? Not at all! Case in point, let’s talk about one of the more well-known and special first editions, The Hobbit.
The Hobbit was originally published in 1937. But if you buy a copy today, it isn’t the same book. It’s the second edition, first published in 1951. What changed? Various modifications were made to bring the story more in line with the upcoming LORD OF THE RINGS. The Hobbit was also originally published in the UK, so there’s the original “first” edition from 1937 in the UK. But there’s also a US first edition. You can guess that the UK first edition is more coveted.
If you’re curious about what the specific differences are between the two editions, plenty of sites categorize them, and a “facsimile” anniversary edition of that first edition is available so you can do your own read and compare!
So edition can matter as much as printing, but only if the book has a history of actually changing over time, or was originally published in a different territory.
Bucky Barnes is Probably a Liar - But He Can Still Teach Us Something (about The Hobbit!)
Speaking of The Hobbit, a recent Marvel show illustrates further how the distinction between printings and editions can actually matter. And is also just a fun bit of trivia. Marvel’s The Falcon & The Winter Soldier:
“I read the Hobbit, in 1937 when it first came out.” ~ Bucky Barnes, The Falcon & The Winter Soldier.
I generally choose to take people at their word, but the odds are Bucky Barnes aka The Winter Soldier, is a big liar. The Hobbit was indeed published originally in 1937, but only in the UK. The book did not land in the United States until 1938. Assuming Bucky didn’t misspeak, this means whatever book he read was part of the original first UK printing from publisher George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
So why is he likely lying?
Well, that first printing, in the fall of 1937, only had around 1500 copies. The printing sold out in just a few months, and though a second limited printing was ordered for the holidays, it was also small and arrived close enough to the end of the year that Bucky getting a copy is rather implausible. And when the book did arrive in the US it had its own limited run (~3,000 books). Not to mention, the arrival was not treated with any kind of real fanfare. So how did Bucky even know about Tolkien at the time?
How Bucky got his hands on one of those limited copies is also up for speculation. But, it’s more likely that he read from the first US printing, or a later one sometime just before shipping off to World War II. Chances are he’s just exaggerating to Sam here to get one over on him.
I can’t find any record of the showrunners/writers giving any remarks about this. My best guess is someone just looked up the original publication date of The Hobbit, saw how well it meshes with Bucky’s age and ran with it. Nothing wrong with that, and it makes for a really great scene. But is a good example of how printings actually matter in terms of book availability.
This is by no means an exhaustive conversation about printings and editions. There are many rabbit holes you can fall down learning this stuff. There are full books cataloging first editions or printings of specific novels based on typos, design quirks, and other bits of info collated over time. Some recommendations:
Collected Books: The Guide to Identification and Values by Allen and Patricia Ahearn
ABC for Book Collectors by John Carter
It can be a fun sort of treasure hunt, particularly as you get into older and older books that have less comprehensive copyright pages (if they have them at all!), such as this copy of The Canterbury Tales from the 1800s, which just says “a new edition” and has no printing information.
In the Next Dispatch from the Cubicle…
We continue to explore the wider weird world of book publishing. Upcoming entries will include:
The first in a series of “how I edit books”
Some basic primers on how traditional publishing and “IP publishing” work.
A deep dive into paper, book sizes, and why book formats exist in the way they do.
We start building out an evolving glossary of publishing terms.
If you ever have questions, want to suggest topics, or want to help shape dispatches from the Cubicle in general, feel free to drop a question in the chat.
-Be Well.
To better illustrate this point. Over 47 years of publishing - over 250 Star Wars novels have been published. Only 1 of those has a second edition.
You might also see printings referred to as “impressions.” That is an antiquated term from when books were created from “impressing” words onto paper using ink, plates, and engraved blocks. The two terms mean the same thing.
This much verbose throat-clearing should make it clear why I’m an editor and not a writer.
Thank you, that was very interesting. I never thought I’d learn about publishing and editing lore but here I am and I like it!
This was so interesting! It's making me want to go and look through all my books a bit Gollum-like myself. Never knew that about the Hobbit either, and so fun that you broke down Bucky's mention. Looking forward to all those future posts!