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by holeeroler on September 24th, 2005

holeeroler

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Why is it that on many books you will find a "countdown" of numbers in sequence on the copyright page near the bottom?

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  • by mister_c on September 27th, 2005

    mister_c

    I've been wondering about this for years and you've finally given me an excuse to look it up!

    The string of numbers on a book's copyright page is known as a "number line". These started to appear after the Second World War and indicate a book's printing history.

    Different publishers use different numbering methods. The most common are:

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

    10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

    1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

    The lowest number is the edition of the book that you are holding. So if the number 1 is present, the book is a First Edition. The next edition of the book will remove the number 1, so it will look like this:

    2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

    10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

    3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

    and so on.

    However, if the paperback edition of a book is not published by the same company that published the hardback edition, they may revert back to 1 for the paperback edition.

    And, just to complicate matters, Random House doesn't use the number 1 at all. Their first editions will look something like this:

    First Edition

    2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

    with the words "First Edition" removed for the second edition.

    Also some publishers use letters to denote the same thing, eg:

    A B C D E F G H I J

    and other publishers don't use the number line at all.

    Quite a minefield, but useful to know if you have any rare First Editions lying around!

    http://www.millersmiles.co.uk/bookguide/firsteditionbooks/firsteditionbooks.htm

    http://www.santacruzpl.org/readyref/files/m-p/numline.shtml

    http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/firstedition.html

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