ppint. ● 21st Mar 2018
| | note this bears no daw "collectors number" on its cover - not all daw books did bear such a number, and no-one, not even don wollheim, knew what his daw books, inc. books' / collector numbers really meant: he assigned them to (most) of the books he published under his own imprint because he'd long since learned - through his days at avon and then ace books - that if there's a series numbering applied to books, some bloody damnfool collectors'll attempt to collect the whole cartload.
so, like the one lit window high up in the castle tower he'd introduced into the cover art of all gothic category mmpbs he was associated with, once he noticed the increased sales associated with such a cover feature, almost all daw books bore a daw books collectors number prominently upon their front covers - often, more obviously than their actual catalog(UE°) number, as wholesalers & bookshops as needed to order/re-stock a book had to find the latter, and so would look for it until they found it. . .
- why did some daw books lose their collectors number, upon later reprinting or reissue, or change collectors number, upon some reissue? don wollheim didn't say "carelessness", sfaiaa (but rather implied it - as well as wondering aloud what kind of a pen-pusher would really care :-) - and i hadn't noticed some change their spots, as it were, to enquire about numbers changing). i suspect, but do not know, that a changed collectors number may indicate that the book in question was re-licenced upon a new contract; and possibly no-one remembered the earlier daw books incarnation, to go back, find and reuse the previous collectors number. but maybe not.
° - UE and: UT (75¢), UY (95¢), UW ($1.50), UE ($1.75), UJ ($1.95), UE (again!) $2.25, $2.50, $2.75, $2.95... and daw's use of new american library's price-code prefix system began to break down, as the system began to collapse - but luckily, the isbn10 extensions & computerised sales systems had begun to take over. . .
(when, for a while, the covers shared by merkin- and canadadian- distributed variants bore different cover prices, the nal price code letter was not altered for the canadadian -carcassed, -priced and -distributed variants.) |