First editions are boring. Every book has one! So not much to discuss there.
On the other hand, later editions are intriguing. Recently I was reading A Year in Provence, and was checking out the copyright page to see how old it was (quite, for the record). At the bottom of the page, where it lists the printing, I was surprised to see this was the 81st one. 81 printings of a book!
You have to wonder how that happens. Think about it: there were 80 distinct times where someone went “Damn, we’re out of books again, gotta print some more.” At some point, in the midst of selling all those books, you’d think they would just have printed a whole bunch. Just plan ahead a wee bit. Sure you have some left over that you don’t sell, but that’s where bargain books come from.
So can anyone beat 81 printings with a book they possess? I don’t think this is something you can look up on the Internet. A good candidate might be the current edition of Harry Potter 1. Or the Bible. I’m not sure which is more popular nowadays.
That’s a good question. I thought of it myself when I saw that Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss has had over 100 printings.
The Bible probably wouldn’t count, since there are so many translations. And out-of-copyright works probably wouldn’t count, either, since anyone can print them without paying a fee, so there’d probably be at least more than one edition currently out there.
It’s now probably cheaper - and for tax reasons far more sensible - for publishers to print up small batches of books and send them all right out than to print large batches and have to warehouse them.
I’ll bet it is a volume of The Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings is the highest-selling piece of fiction of all time, with over 100,000,000 copies printed. Only the Bible (over 6 billion copies) and Mao’s little red book (over 900,000,000 copies) have had more copies printed.
Finally remembered to check out books over the weekend.
The Hobbit was in its 135th printing; LotR in the 131st printing.
These paperbacks are unusual in the publishing world for having been put out solely by Ballantine for 40 years. Most paperbacks switch companies every few years as contracts end.