Stealing Books-A Bookscout's Guide To Book Collecting

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Sections
  Introduction
  Chapter 1
  Chapter 2
  Chapter 3
  Chapter 4
  Chapter 5
  Chapter 6
  Chapter 7
  Chapter 8
  Appendix 1
  Appendix 2
  Appendix 3
  Appendix 4

Chapter 3 - Identifying First Editions

Identifying First Editions

You want to get a copy of Bill McBride’s Pocket Guide To The Identification Of First Editions. It is an excellent little book. It’ll fit in your pocket. Mine is extremely well worn because I have taken it just everywhere. You’ll look up the publisher, and different publishers in different years have used different methods to identify whether it’s a first edition or not. And even to those there are exceptions. So you have to learn. As you look at books over and over again, you kind of get to learn. Generally, for the most part, a lot of the books you are going to be dealing with, you are probably going to be dealing with maybe a few dozen publishers over and over again. So for many publishers you will get to recognize whether it is a first edition or not. For instance you may see a Random House book, and know the method they use. So as you learn to identify what to look for. Some first editions will have the words First Edition on the copyright page if it is a first edition. Others will not. Some books will include the word First Edition even when it is not truly a first edition. Others will have a number line that ends with a ‘1’ meaning it is a first printing. But not all publishers will do this.
A first edition published by Random House will have the words First Edition, and also include a number line ending with a ‘2’. In recent years, Random House has confused things further by including a number line in many later printings of such books as Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, and Primary Colors, that ends in a ‘1’, but lacks the words First Edition, and includes a letter in the middle of the number line. These are not first editions. True first editions of these books will still include the words First Edition and the number line ending with a ‘2’. I believe that the letters represent increments of ten, so that a number line that ends in a 1, and includes the letter ‘A’ in the middle is actually an 11th printing. This is just a guess. If you look, you will see hundreds of these later printings in used book stores sometimes mislabeled as first editions. Still, it is worthwhile to look through them as you might stumble over a true first edition of Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil which has some value.
Other books won’t list anything on the copyright page. For a while I was trying to find edition of The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. I had a hard time locating a true first edition. I would go to used book stores, and I’d find copies of it and they would be identified as first editions. But when I’d look in the book, I’d find out that in fact it was a later printing. What they were doing was looking only at the copyright page, find no previous printings listed, and would assume it was a first edition. But they were wrong. For a few years, that particular publisher would list the number line on the last page of the book. So many times when I was picking up these books, I’d flip to the last page and find it was something like a 5th printing. A true first edition of The Exorcist will list the words First Edition on the copyright page, and number line on the last page of the book will end with a ‘1’. Eventually I began searching on eBay. People would list a First Edition of The Exorcist, and I would send them an email asking whether it stated First Edition on the copyright page or not, and what the number line on the last page read. Most times it would not be a first edition. When it was not a first edition, I would email them with the information that it was not a first edition, and describe the markings that a First Edition should have. Sometimes they would modify their auction, sometimes they wouldn’t. Eventually I did find a true first edition of The Exorcist on eBay and I managed to get it for a bargain price of under five dollars. I think at that point many people were used to finding falsely represented first editions of The Exorcist, that they began to discount any of the copies of The Exorcist as actually being first editions.

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