Editions/Printing

[Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer]

No: HPFGUIDX 3947

Hi --

To answer the various questions on how to discern which edition & which
printing you have of any of the HP books, here's what I know.

1.  The ISBN has nothing to do with it.  It's the same ISBN for the 1st
edition, 1st printing of Sorcerer's Stone as it will be for the 3rd
edition, 75th printing of SS.  It's just a tracking number.  As a former
employee of Waldenbooks back in high school, I can remember when we had
to manually enter the ISBNs into the cash register.  I got real fast at
typing those things (& finding them on the back covers of books).  I bet
things have changed a bit in the bookselling world since then, eh Lori?

2.  At this point, I believe all HP books are 1st editions.  There are
multiple printings, but as far as I know, they have not gone back & done
enough revisions to qualify as billing one of the books as a revised or
2nd edition.  So . . . . if you're trying to be a collector of the more
rare HP items, you don't care at *all* if it's a 1st edition (they *all*
are at this point).  Be wary of the Ebay sellers who bill their wares as
1st editions but can't tell you what printing it is.  That's where the
value is now -- the printing that you have.

3.  To find what printing you have, look at the string of numbers under
the Library of Congress number.  Here's what my paperback CoS version
looks like (I think it's a 5th printing):

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1       0 1 2 3 4 5/0
Printed in the USA     40
First Scholastic Trade paperback printing

Contrast my hardback (1st printing) of GoF:

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1            0/0  01 02 03 04
Printed in the USA      23
First American edition, July 2000

If you bought a hardback GoF on July 8th, you have a first printing.
They did 3.8 million of those in the first print run.

There is a website that explains all this better than I have -- it's how
I learned what to look for when I first started collecting first
printings.

http://www.helicon.net/paracelsus/harrypotter/

It also explains the UK editions.  I *cannot* afford 1st printings in
the UK editions & have contented myself with 1st printings of the US
hardbacks (although the 1st printing for hardback US SS is also out of
my price reach at the moment).  You can still get 1st printings of the
UK Deluxe Collectors editions of the books for a somewhat reasonable
price (although not of PoA -- it was the first one issued in the Deluxe
editions & they only printed 1000 copies in the first printing).  I am
very happy with my 2nd printing of the Deluxe PoA (UK).  :--)

Penny