While the lack of a price when the book is published by a major American publisher is the most common indicator of a book club edition, the fact that there is a price present doesn’t always means that the book is trade edition.

The two most common examples of book club editions having prices are:

1- The Family Bookshelf (uses other names but they are all similiar.) These editions almost universally have a price on the dust jacket (at least through the early 80’s), often (but not always) state “First edition” AND on the rear flap of the dust jacket they will have a statement “Family bookshelf edition” or something to that effect. These books are usually smaller and more cheaply produced than the regular trade edition, but if you haven’t handled the trade edition, you might not know the difference. Common examples are the Miss Read books, biographies of people who have done a lot of good, memoirs of families who have adopted animals, etc. – in other words, good family reading. Probably 50% of these are misidentified as first editions at the online book sites.

2- The Book of the Month Club included prices on their dust jackets for awhile in the 70’s. These books will have the regular price on the front flap – at the top of the flap it will say “Selection of the Book of the Month Club” with an asterisk – at the bottom of the flap the asterisk explains “trademark of the Book of the Month Club.” These books will sometimes state “first edition” etc – all of them have the blind-stamped dot on the back cover. Among the books which have these markings are Finney’s TIME AND AGAIN, Greene’s TRAVEL WITH MY AUNT and several others. (Do not confuse this with the simple statement “selection of the Book of the Month Club” which can appear on either flap and is just an advertising point.) The crucial thing is the presence of BOTH statements on the FRONT flap. There are a few “oddball” BOMC editions which have no indication at all on the dust jacket that they are BOMC books – one title is Joan Williams’ first book THE MORNING AND THE EVENING where most copies of the BOOK will have the blind-stamped dot (because the BOMC edition is FAR more common than the trade edition), but all of the dust jackets are identical to the trade dust jacket (this is not a case of a trade jacket being put on a BOMC book – there is no such thing as a book club dust jacket for this title.) Again, I will bet that most of the “first editions” listed online for this title have been misidentified. Other titles are Dee Brown’s LET THE LONESOME WHISTLE BLOW and Bergman THE CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE NEGRO IN AMERICA.

It is important to remember that when a Book of the Month Club edition existed, the numbers in which it was issued were usually much larger than the trade edition. I read about one title where the trade edition was only 20,000 copies, while the BOMC editions (some stated first, some did not) exceeded half a million copies. If you see a book which you know was a BOMC selection, if the corner of the dj is price-clipped, make sure to check for that blind-stamped dot. Since earlier BOMC books did not use the blind dot, if you find a copy of a book which was a BOMC selection without a dustjacket, then using the logic that 90% of more of the copies published were BOMC editions, you should assume that this was also a BOMC edition. Unless you have a dustjacket with the price present, you cannot safely or honestly call it a first edition (unless you have provenance like the original purchase receipt laid in, etc.)