Printings, states and issue points in books

Two copies of the same book sit on the table. Same publisher, same ISBN, same price on the back, same cover painting. One is a first printing and the other came off the press years later, and the only thing that says so is a row of digits on the copyright page. Collectors have words for these differences, and the words matter because the price follows them.

Printing and impression

A printing is one run through the press. When the publisher sells out and orders more copies from the same setting of type, that is a second printing, and the book is still the same edition. British publishers say impression for the same thing, which is why the edition form offers "This Impression" among its date types. How to tell a first edition covers reading the number line and the printing statement, so this guide starts where that one stops.

The catalog holds two printings of the hardback How to Be a Villain. They share an ISBN, a $12.95 price and a 2003 copyright date. One has a full number line down to 1 and a matte cover. The other stops at 8, has a glossy cover, and the five-digit add-on beside the barcode changed from 90000 to 51295. A first printing and an eighth.

That is the usual pattern. A reprint is the publisher's chance to change the price, the barcode add-on, the cover finish, the blurb or the list of other titles in the back, and the number line is often the only thing that announces it. So a different printer's key is reason enough for an edition entry of its own. The Bookogs members who settled this in 2015 had already watched printings change in content, artwork, price and barcode, and treated a new key as a new printing.

State

A state is a difference between copies of the same printing. The sheets came off the press together, but something happened before all of them reached a buyer. A typo was corrected part way through the run. The binder ran out of one cloth and finished the job in another. A jacket was reprinted. The earlier state is the one collectors chase, and it is often the harder one to prove.

Gnome Press, the small science fiction house of the late 1940s and 1950s, is the textbook case. It printed runs of four or five thousand copies but could only afford to bind what it could sell, so the rest waited in sheets and were bound later in whatever cloth was to hand. Cosmic Engineers from 1950 exists in blue cloth lettered in yellow, the first state, and in tan boards lettered in blue. Judgment Night from 1952 is first in light teal cloth with red spine lettering and later in darker boards lettered in blue. Every one of those copies is a first edition, first printing. A member who had studied the press explained on the Bookogs forum: "It wasn't about "some modern marketingfuzz"; it was about available funds."

The Carnelian Cube, the first book Gnome published, hides a second trap. Through an error at the printer, as much as half of the first printing says "Second Printing" on the copyright page. Those copies are the second state of the first printing, in the same grey cloth as the first state. The real second printing came a year later in gold cloth.

Issue

An issue is a change the publisher made on purpose after copies had already gone on sale. Leftover sheets get a new title page with a later date, a leaf with a libel in it is cut out and replaced, or a different publisher's name appears after the stock changed hands. For cataloguing, treat state and issue the same way. Say what differs, and say which came first if anyone knows.

Issue points are the small details that settle which state or issue you have. When a dealer writes "with all the issue points", every known clue checks out for the earliest one.

Where to look

Start with the copyright page: the number line, any "first printing" or "reprinted" statement, and the printing date if there is one. Finnish books, among others, say "third printing" in words instead. Then the price, on the jacket flap or the back cover, and the five-digit add-on beside the barcode, which usually encodes the price and changes when it does. Then the binding and the jacket: cloth colour, lettering, matte against glossy laminate. Then the back of the book, where the publisher's list of other titles grows with each reprint. Last, the text itself. A corrected typo, an added dedication, a changed page count.

You will rarely work all of this out from one copy. An author bibliography or a study of the publisher lists the known states, and the notes on an existing entry often hold what another collector has already copied from one.

Recording it on ctlgs

Each printing is its own edition under the book. Enter the number line as an identifying code of type "Printer's Key", exactly as printed, spaces and all. If the book states the printing in words instead, use "Impression/Printing No." Either way the book page's Editions table shows it in an Impression column, where the printings of one title line up for comparison. Add the price and the barcode add-on as codes too, and the printing date as a date of type "This Impression" or "Reprinted".

There is no field for state, so it goes in Notes, at the top where the next person will see it. Say which state the entry describes and list the others. The Gnome Press entries above do this well: "First Edition, Second State. First State: Blue cloth lettered in yellow. Second State: Tan boards lettered in blue." If the states sell at clearly different prices, the test in editions and pressings applies and each state can have its own entry. If one entry covers both, say which state you own in the notes on your copy.

When two entries differ only by the printer's key, link them to each other in Notes so nobody merges them, and say exactly what differs. The two Norton paperbacks of Freud's The Question of Lay Analysis each carry the line "Indistinguishable from this edition in all but the Printer's Key", with "this edition" linking across to the other. Write the link as an <a href="/c/books/edition/…/"> tag. A bare address stays plain text.

Then add your copy to the entry you are holding, and grade it as catalog your book collection describes.