Fiction Addiction’s Blog

When book collectors and booksellers say “first edition,” this is usually meant as shorthand for “first printing of the first edition”. Collectors usually prefer to own the first printing of a book and thus that printing can be worth much, much more than a second, or later printing. So, when I price a book it is often crucial to determine whether that book is a first printing.

Determining the printing can be easy or extremely difficult. To give you an example of how one might go about it, I’ll talk about a recent acquisition: a hardcover copy of Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. It had a price of $24.95 on the dust jacket flap, indicating that it was not a bookclub edition.

The copyright page said “First Edition”, which was promising, and had a number line ending in 2. Number lines are a recent publishing phenomenon meant to indicate printings. Usually a First Edition will have a number line ranging from 1 to 10, though the numbers can be increasing, decreasing, or alternate from side to side. Until recently, Random House was the exception. Their first printings said “First Edition” and had a number line ending in 2. Their 2nd printing had a number line ending in 2, but did not say “First Edition”. (Several years ago they changed this policy and now put a 1 at the end like everyone else.)

The publisher of Choke, per the copyright page, was “Doubleday, an imprint of Random House.” So, did the Random House rule apply or not? (For those who believe this rule only applies to Random House books and not imprints, note that Villard Books follows the Random House ‘2′ rule.)

First, I turned to my reference book First Editions: A Guide to Identification by Edward Zempel and Linda Verkler. They had a listing for Doubleday (a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc.) that said “The words First Edition are indicated on the copyright page. On subsequent printings this is removed and the print history line indicating the current printing is added.” This info didn’t help me much since even if a “print history line” is the same as a number line they implied that I shouldn’t see both it and the slug “First Edition”. Since my copy of First Editions is the 3rd edition published in 1995 (before Random House bought Bantam Doubleday Dell) and Choke was published in 2001, I decided I couldn’t rely on Zempel and Verkler and needed to do more research.

Next, I turned to www.abebooks.com. I did an advanced search for a hardcover, first edition copy of Choke by Palahniuk and sorted from highest price to lowest.  Currently, there is a signed copy listing for $229.00 whose description states “The ‘1′ is in the number line on the copyright page. The $24.95 price is intact on the jacket.” This indicates that the first printing should indeed have a 1 in the number line and that my copy is merely a 2nd printing.

At the time I was researching this title, however, I didn’t see this listing and so I was still stumped.  I did see a listing for a “review copy” of the first edition, with publisher promotional material laid in. Review copies are usually sent hot off the presses to journalists, bloggers, etc. and so it seemed entirely likely that such a copy would indeed be a first edition. I emailed the seller and explained that I was trying to determine the printing of my own copy and would he be kind enough to tell me whether his first edition had a 1 in the numberline. I was pleasantly surprised to get a prompt reply. Unfortunately, his copy did indeed have a 1 in the number line.

And that is how I determine that I did not have a first edition copy of Choke by Chuck Palahniuk!