David Gemmell first edition question

Hi,
I just received a hardcover first edition of WAYLANDER II from a guy in

England. There is no price on the dust wrapper flap. All of my other
Legend Gemmell firsts have a price. I'm worried that this may be a book

club jacket married to the book. I paid alot for this so it's pretty
important.
Can someone check their copy?
Thanks in advance for any help.

Pausing between engagements, Michael replied:

There are two ded giveways to a club book (generally...) the first one
is one you named, no price on the dustjacket. The second is the size.
Is you copy smaller than other hardcovers you may own? Book clubs are
much smaller in size than those issued for general sale.

Good Luck.

Michael

Hi,
I just received a hardcover first edition of WAYLANDER II from a guy in

England. There is no price on the dust wrapper flap. All of my other
Legend Gemmell firsts have a price. I'm worried that this may be a book

club jacket married to the book. I paid alot for this so it's pretty
important.
Can someone check their copy?
Thanks in advance for any help.

mdobson wrote:
Pausing between engagements, Michael replied:

There are two ded giveways to a club book (generally...) the first one
is one you named, no price on the dustjacket. The second is the size.
Is you copy smaller than other hardcovers you may own? Book clubs are
much smaller in size than those issued for general sale.

Good Luck.

Michael


As to the latter point, it is often true but not always.

Sometimes differentiation between BCEs and real editions cannot be done by size.
Example from today: the BCE for the first American edition (Knopf) of Le
Carre's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is the same size as the real thing. It
even says "First Edition" on the copyright page. But the dust jacket has no
price, the lettering on the cover is in silver not gold, and there is that
little square indent on the back cover. But the size is identical and the pages
are rough cut just like the real thing.

Then there is the weird instance of the BCEs for the Hitchhiker's Guide series.
The BCEs are larger than the real thing.


Francis A. Miniter

wrote:

I just received a hardcover first edition of WAYLANDER II from a guy in
England. There is no price on the dust wrapper flap. All of my other
Legend Gemmell firsts have a price. I'm worried that this may be a book
club jacket married to the book. I paid alot for this so it's pretty
important.
Can someone check their copy?

I don't have a copy, but one of the copies on ABE is described thus:

"Book Description: Century / Legend, London, United Kingdom, 1992. Book
Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. First British First
Printing Ex Library. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. a rare collectible first
british edition hard cover book.not price clipped."

And another:

"Book Description: Legend, London, United Kingdom, 1992. Hard Cover.
Book Condition: Good -. Good+:VG-. First Edition. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾"
tall. Library issue binding. Library stickers & stamps (Front end paper
& copyright page) Jacket is not price clipped"

Neither description actually *says* that there's a price tag in the
first place, though the description implies it.

Another description I found on an independent site is even more ambiguous:

"Dustwrapper, now protected, is unclipped"

There are exceptions to almost every rule and, while the absence of a
price tag is usually the hallmark of a BCE, it is not always so (doesn't
apply to nonfiction, for example, and sometimes there are printer's
errors). The fact that there doesn't seem to be any online seller's
description that states positively "price tag intact" (or similar)
leaves room for doubt.

It might be worth e-mailing one of the ABE sellers and asking what the
price tag says.

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com

Thanks to all.
Here's the story so far.....
The book is the same size as my other Gemmell first edition Legend
books. It says Legend on the spine panel of the dw. The copyright page
says "First published in Great Britain in 1992".
Andy Richards at Cold Tonnage books (UK SF/Fantasy specialist dealer)
told me that the book club edition is identical to the first EXCEPT for
the lack of a price on the dw.

The seller swears that there was no book club Gemmells until IRONHANDS
DAUGHTER. He says he got the info from Gemmell himself. The seller
seems like an honest guy.

I checked with a buddy who has a near complete Gemmell collection and
his copy has no price but that doesn't really confirm anything.

I don't think you can email ABE booksellers direct anymore but I'll
try.

I am familiar with USA book club identification but the UK is a
different story.

wrote:

I don't think you can email ABE booksellers direct anymore but I'll
try.

You can, but ABE has made it a little harder to find an e-mail address
by no longer including it in the info that comes up when you first click
on a listed title.

There are two ways to find an e-mail address. From an individual book
listing in a page of search results, click the seller's linked name,
then, in the right column under Payment Methods, click [Ask Bookseller a
Question]. This will bring up a form with the seller's addy. You can
use this form or copy and paste the address to your own e-mail.

Also, you can find sellers' homepages by searching from he
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/docs/Bookstores/ and then clicking on the
seller's name.


--Jon Meyers

Dave:

Dunno how much help this is, but I checked the two Legends hardbacks I
have and they both have prices on the lower front flap. Neither are
the Gemmell, though.

Would there be a difference in the ISBN between the trade and the book
club?

Here's what I've found out.
According to the seller there was no book club edition of WAYLANDER II.
IRONHANDS DAUGHTER was the first Gemmell book club.
A buddy of mine who is a Gemmell collector checked his book and he is
also missing the price on the dw. He was told that a certain # of the
books that were going to be sold to libraries had no price on the
jacket. A small # that were for retail had a price. Either some of the
unpriced copies were snagged by collectors or more likely, Gemmell at
the time was becoming more popular and there were more retail orders
than anticipated. Then the unpriced books would have been sent out.
So, bottom line, both priced and unpriced are correct first editions.
Both are variants with the priced version being scarcer.
Now, some UK SF book club editions WERE simply trade editions without a
price. Seems like this book wasn't one of them.
Gemmell collecting is tough.

wrote:
Hi,
I just received a hardcover first edition of WAYLANDER II from a guy in

England. There is no price on the dust wrapper flap. All of my other
Legend Gemmell firsts have a price. I'm worried that this may be a book

club jacket married to the book. I paid alot for this so it's pretty
important.
Can someone check their copy?
Thanks in advance for any help.

I don't collect Gemmell, but the Locus database suggests there should
be a price (without coming out and saying it):

* *Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf (Legend 0-7126-4830-5, Oct
'92 [Sep '92], £9.99, 296pp, tp, cover by Mike Posen) [Drenai;
Waylander] Fantasy novel following on from the events in Waylander.
Recommended (PSP). Volume five in the "Drenai" series. A hardcover
edition (-4829-1, £14.99) is also available.

From http://www.locusmag.com/index/b189.html#A2518

Every now and then I read dealer descriptions of "Export Editions" of
some UK books intended for the Commonwealth market, which are identical
to the regular edition except lacking a price. I'm not sure if I
actually believe these are not book club editions, as when asked
Stephen baxter about export editions for his books, he didn't know
anything about them.

Of vourse, if it's like all the other Legend books I've seen of that
era, then the paper is already browning...

Just feel I should point out that you simply can't apply the USA rules
of identification of Book Club Editions when considering UK editions.

Nearly always, UK Book Club Editions are very easy to identify as the
title page is totally different to a publishers edition. In the last
30 years most book club editions have been released by either "Book
Club Associates" (BCA) or Guild Publishing (GP) with the logo clearly
shown at the base of the spine of the dust jacket.

Other giveaways are no ISBN and no price on the jacket.

There are other instances of UK First Editions not having a price on
the jacket and I believe these were intended for export or library.

Hope this helps.

Stan
Giltedge Books