
In the lead type era, books had to be reset for a second or later printing/impression, thus creating a new edition.

These books have different covers, and the title page and copyright page may differ, but to a bibliographer they are the same edition. Publishers often use the same typesetting for the hardcover and trade paperback versions of a book. In the modern era, books are typeset electronically, so a book may go through hundreds of printings using the same setting of type. Bowers wrote that an edition is “the whole number of copies printed at any time or times from substantially the same setting of type-pages,” including “all issues and variant states existing within its basic type-setting, as well as all impressions.” The classic explanation of edition was given by Fredson Bowers in Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949). The first edition of a facsimile reprint is the reprint publisher's first edition, but not the first edition of the work itself. There will be a first edition of each, which the publisher may cite on the copyright page, such as: "First mass market paperback edition".

A popular work may be published and reprinted over time by many publishers, and in a variety of formats. Post World War II books often include a number line or printers key that indicates the printing.Ī "first edition" per se is not a valuable collectible book. Book collectors generally use the term to mean the first printing of the first edition ("first edition, first impression", in the United Kingdom). The precise meaning of a first edition differs significantly in the fields of bibliography and book collecting. Thus a book printed today, by the same publisher, and from the same type as when it was first published, is still the first edition of that book, to a bibliographer. The bibliographical definition of an "edition" includes all copies of a book printed “from substantially the same setting of type,” including all minor typographical variants.


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