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Doubleday Salem's Lot editions

Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2016 6:38 am
by jhanic
This question came up on the TDT.org forums. One of the supercollectors posted a memo detailing that the third state dust jacket (with the Father Callahan correction) was possibly used on a second printing (of 7500 copies) of the book. I have never seen that dust jacket on any but a first printing (as it says on the copyright page) book.

My question is has anyone ever seen the third state dust jacket on any other than a first edition first printing book?

John

Re: Doubleday Salem's Lot editions

Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2016 8:15 am
by TheCollector
Hey John,

I haven't, but I've probably handled less than 10 copies in my collecting career and they've all been limited to 1st/2nd 1st/3rd and BC editions.

My for most books gut would tell me that somewhere down the line someone just put an earlier DJ on a later printing as the most likely explanation.....similar to how you see pristine BC dustjackets on trade editions sometimes because some guy had two copies of the book and was matching the nicest copy of his DJ with the nicest copy of his book.

But with Salem's Lot's little history on DJ's I suppose it's possible Doubleday had some extra 3rd states laying around and reused some on a 2nd printing.

Could you link the post? I'd like to see what the argument is for this. I dug around the Collecting questions thread, and random questions thread but didn't find the conversation.

Re: Doubleday Salem's Lot editions

Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2016 12:27 pm
by jhanic
Here you are:

http://www.thedarktower.org/palaver/sho ... nts&page=1

John

Re: Doubleday Salem's Lot editions

Posted: Mon Feb 29, 2016 9:10 am
by TheCollector
Thanks John,

I took a quick read, I'm going to have to digest this a little later in the week and write down a timeline (today is the last day of the month so it's site update time for tomorrows newsletter along with a busy week at the day job) - it sure would be nice to see some sort of reply from whoever printed the revised DJ's to clarify when they were actually printed and what happened to them.

At any rate, the memo is dated September 22nd, which is somewhere between the 37th and 38th week of the year I'm taking that to mean the 1st/1st run was already fully completed. And would have needed probably at least a week to be shipped around the country in time for the bookstores to receive and stock them it seems unlikely many of the actual 1st printings would have received modified DJ's (the memo seems to say as much)

I don't know what all was involved in making these sort of changes in 1975, but without modern computers in place I imagine it couldn't happen with as much speed as it would today. September 22nd was a Monday, what would the earliest be something like this could be modified, re-printed and gotten back to wherever the books were warehoused, a week? Two? That leaves not much time to swap DJ's from books already. Then we have the 2nd part of the memo stating that all the 2nd printings should contain these new revisions and if they managed to get a few 3rd state DJ's on the first editions then they should have been ready for all the 2nd printings.

So working my way thru all of that tells me that yeah, the second print run (Q41 gutter cords) would probably contain more of the 3rd state DJ's then the actual 1st/1st print run. At least based on just seeing the one memo and no reply.

Kind of a bit to infer without seeing any replies to that one memo

Re: Doubleday Salem's Lot editions

Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 11:50 am
by OneFathom
Hi, John.

To answer your question — yes, I have seen the $7.95 (Callahan) on something OTHER than a 1st/1st. I found mine wrapped around a "Q41" copy. I've been able to ascertain by looking at a few different Q41 that they all had the $7.95 Callahan, as well.

Colin

Re: Doubleday Salem's Lot editions

Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2016 7:22 am
by jhanic
OneFathom wrote:Hi, John.

To answer your question — yes, I have seen the $7.95 (Callahan) on something OTHER than a 1st/1st. I found mine wrapped around a "Q41" copy. I've been able to ascertain by looking at a few different Q41 that they all had the $7.95 Callahan, as well.

Colin
Interesting!

John

Re: Doubleday Salem's Lot editions

Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2016 6:13 pm
by downs1418
Just out of curiosity, what is the difference in the 3rd state DJ and a 2nd printing DJ?

Re: Doubleday Salem's Lot editions

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2016 7:58 am
by TheCollector
downs1418 wrote:Just out of curiosity, what is the difference in the 3rd state DJ and a 2nd printing DJ?
I haven't actively sought out a 2nd edition DJ, but with the way inflation was going in the 80's I would imagine that by the time they got to an actual 2nd edition (the main 3 DJ's being 1st edition 1/2/3rd state) that the price on the DJ would be higher if nothing else.

Re: Doubleday Salem's Lot editions

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2016 10:36 am
by jhanic
TheCollector wrote:
downs1418 wrote:Just out of curiosity, what is the difference in the 3rd state DJ and a 2nd printing DJ?
I haven't actively sought out a 2nd edition DJ, but with the way inflation was going in the 80's I would imagine that by the time they got to an actual 2nd edition (the main 3 DJ's being 1st edition 1/2/3rd state) that the price on the DJ would be higher if nothing else.
I agree.

John