Position:Home>Books & Authors> Are my books First Editions? How can I tell?

First editions are somewhat different than first printings!. A first edition of a book can have many print runs!. When a book sells out in the store, publishers will print more copies!.

If you want to know what printing your book was, you can look at the mysterious horizontal list of numbers usually found near the bottom of the copyright page!. Sometimes they count backwards from 10 to 1, sometimes they're in a seemingly random order!. But whatever the lowest number still left on the page, that's what print run your copy was part of!. Each time the publisher prints more copies, they eliminate the next lowest number!.

For example, if the copyright page has the following:

10 9 8 7 6 5 4

And the rest of the numbers are gone, you know that the book was in its 4th printing when you bought it!.

But if the numbers look like this:

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Then you know you have a copy from the FIRST printing!.

To put things in perspective, my copy of Twilight is from the 26th print run! The copyright pages says:

PB: 30 29 28 27 26

(PB stands for paperback, as opposed to the hard cover version)

Hope this helps!

All best,
Jessica Brody
author of THE FIDELITY FILES (St!. Martin's Press, 2008)
http://www!.TheFidelityFiles!.comWww@QuestionHome@Com

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yes the do by law it must be known it is the first Edition other wise it would say 2 Edition 3 Edition ect Www@QuestionHome@Com

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first editions will say they are

if not it will say about it being reprinted and when it was reprintedWww@QuestionHome@Com

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