Wednesday, December 11, 2013

First Editions

One of my favorite book series is The Dark Tower by Stephen King. The first volume in this seven book epic is called The Gunslinger. Years ago I was curious as to how much a copy of the first edition printing of this book might run me, as I am a book collector and love Stephen King's works with a passion. Unfortunately for my humble pocketbook, I found that a true first edition of King's first Tower book ran between $6000-$7000. This is a pretty mean chunk of change for a novel that only came out in 1982.

The reasons for this is that the print run for the first edition was a very small one consisting of only 500 copies. Shortly afterwards a mass-market edition of 10000 volumes was issued and even those for upwards of $750-$800. What this taught is that first editions of newer books can be worth some serious money. I have taken it upon myself to find small authors with great talent and try to pick up first edition printings of their novels in hopes that their value will rise. I consider it like investing in stocks or playing the lottery, but it's fun and I have found some good reads doing it.

Source: The Collector

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