Book

Author:	Dean R. Koontz
Title:	Dark Of The Woods
Publisher:	Ace
Country:	USA
Date:	1970
Format:	Paperback
Genre:	Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy
Cat#:	13793
Rating:	Rate
Collection:	I Own It I Want It
Community:	1 Owns
Price Guide:	Valuation Page
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Notes

Ace Double, edition c/w "Soft Come The Dragons"
© 1970 by Dean R. Koontz
108 pp.
Ace #: 441-13793-075
cover price 75c
cover artist: Jeff Jones

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Comments and Reviews


ppint. 6th Sep 2023		ace books mmpb first printing, first edition cover art by jeff jones (signed jones, credited) b+w frontispiece by jack gaughan (signed, uncredited) cover price 75¢ ½ 256pp. including 2 x titles, indicia etc, advertising pp. in-between the double's halves doubled with ''soft come the dragons'' dean r. koontz (1970), q.v.



ppint. 12th Feb 2023		notes: the statement that the number-string quoted is the book's sbn is wrong and should be deleted.



ppint. 13th May 2022		not an sbn, but a number-string composed of three distinct separate elements strung together: yes, the 441- is the publisher code that will later be part of ace books's isbn10s and isbn13ses; i don't know if it was originally allocated to charter communications, inc. who bought ace books at the end of its independent existence, or if it was actually allocated to ace books; but the middle block is the cat# in the ace books five-digit cat# system: this was a truly wondrous and mystical - well, mysterious and opaque to most mere mortals - creation designed (i believe) to be a sturdy system that would last at least ten years - or even two decades or more - in anticipation of the rapidly approaching end of the price letter-three-digit main cat# sequence(s), which was (or were) already creaking quite severely, and needed something that could cope with a sizeable number of monthly releases, a large back catalog, easily indicate a range of cover prices to fairly unskilled warehouse workers - *and* would make keeping track of the reprintings of titles and their sales - at their different cover prices - and therefore make their separate royalties due to be paid on each - a simple matter of procedure. 00000 through 99999 was accordingly split into blocks of numbers that were assigned to the first significant letter of books' titles - ignoring the definite and indefinite articles a, an, the - starting (in theory) with all titles already published and still in print (i.e. still in the warehouse and still being supplied when ordered) began with a word beginning with an ''a'' - through the alphabet to ''z'' and titles beginning with a digit being notionally assigned a five-digit system cat#. the size (length of range) of each the five-digit numerical cat# system's number blocks, however, was not necessarily predictable: the designer attempted to allocate larger blocks to more commonly used initial words' first letters, and smaller blocks to letters less commonly used; and it was designed to allow for further printings of a book by leaving unused at least the four numbers following each allocated number for reprints to be indicated by progressively increasing the cat# by 1 with each reprint; so - in theory - no new title would be allocated a number closer to an already used (or deemed to have been used for an older book still in print) than that number plus four; and no new title would be allocated a number that did not correspond to the first significant letter of its title (i.e. excluding the definite and indefinite articles); - this did, however require that the first significant word of only one of the two titles of an ace double format mmpb could dictate which number block its assigned cat# indicated (unless the two titles just happened to possess titles whose first significant word started with the same letter) - and there doesn't appear to have been a rule stating it should be the earliest of the two possibilities in the alphabet, nor that it should be that of the larger ''half'' of the ace double. - and sometimes - evidently - mistakes were made; and some books were assigned a cat# way out of the block their title would appear to require: occasionally the reason or reasoning can be deduced - for example, where the first in a series has been allocated a cat# from the block appropriate to the series title, rather than that of the individual book - and quite often, further books in that series allocated cat#s each one number progressively higher, which ought to have been reserved for reprints of that first title. - other oddities occur, and there are known cases of announced reprintings complete with new cat#s appropriate not actually appearing because sufficient unsold stock of the previous printing had been found in the warehouse(!) - but also, of reprintings having occurred with no associated increment of the cat# - sometimes with the reprint bearing a line noting its being a new printing, but sometimes (and potentially deliberately) not. the last block is of three digits giving the cover price in cents: 075 = 75¢ in this case; where the canadian cover price differed, it was ignored in the number-string. ''naturally.''



annaloog 13th May 2022		My favorite Jeff Jones cover art.