First Editions

[David]

Richard wrote, about books bought on the day of publication:

> In theory, they should *all* be first editions, as it's unlikely 
that 
> Bloomsbury would order up a reprint before the first one is sold 
out. :-) 

You'd think so, wouldn't you?  However, James bought his POA on the 
day of publication, and it's not first edition by the row of numbers 
(this is in the UK).

I wonder if at that time they ordered up reprints in response to pre-
publication ordering - I don't know how much of that there was with 
POA, but obviously James knew when the publication date was.

I guess there are economic advantages to 'just-in-time' printing of 
books as you then don't have to have big warehouses full of them, 
though whether that is the main driver I couldn't say.

IIRC, the 'first edition' run for GOF was much much larger than for 
the first three books.

David