Caroline Starr Rose

picture book and middle-grade author

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Those Funny Numbers

13 Comments

Ever wonder what those numbers on a title page mean?

Here’s what my editor told me:

The numbers on the left are the printings of the book. Each time there’s a reprint, we delete a number. The numbers on the right are the year.

So, for the 2nd printing in 2012, it would look like
2 3 4 5 6 – 16 15 14 13 12
Other houses treat this differently, but this is how Tricycle always did it and apparently Random House Children’s Books as well.

Interesting, huh?


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Filed Under: publication, this and that

Comments

  1. Piedmont Writer says

    September 27, 2010 at 9:24 am

    And so I just had to look in a few books right here on my desk.

    Thanks Caroline, I learn something new everyday.

    Reply
  2. Jennifer Shirk says

    September 27, 2010 at 11:47 am

    Huh. That IS interesting. 🙂

    Reply
  3. Tabitha Bird says

    September 27, 2010 at 1:23 pm

    And here I was thinking they just liked to put numbers on the front page to make it look more ‘booky’ :)))

    Thank you for your comment on my blog.

    Reply
  4. Janet Johnson says

    September 27, 2010 at 3:32 pm

    How interesting! So fun to learn the inside information. 🙂

    Reply
  5. Sara B. Larson says

    September 27, 2010 at 4:04 pm

    You learn something new every day! Thanks!

    Reply
  6. Shannon O'Donnell says

    September 27, 2010 at 4:59 pm

    Hmmmm…very interesting! 🙂

    Reply
  7. Susan Kaye Quinn says

    September 27, 2010 at 5:58 pm

    Another mystery solved! My husband was asking me about this just the other day! 🙂

    Reply
  8. Karen Strong says

    September 27, 2010 at 8:45 pm

    That is interesting. Never knew what those numbers meant.

    Reply
  9. Carin S. says

    September 27, 2010 at 10:27 pm

    Frustratingly, almost every publishing house does it differently, but they’re all variations on a theme. So yes, if the 1 is gone, it’s probably the 2nd printing. But the numbers might go up or down, might include teens or just 1-10, or 0-9, etc. If you can think of another permutation, it’s probably been done.

    Reply
  10. Lola Sharp says

    September 27, 2010 at 11:45 pm

    I was excited to learn this new factoid (thank you for sharing)…and then Carin made my head explode. 😉

    I love that you taught me something today.

    Happy Monday,
    Lola

    Reply
  11. Rosslyn Elliott says

    September 28, 2010 at 3:50 am

    I’m glad you spilled the beans on that one…I had no idea. 🙂

    Reply
  12. Elisabeth Black says

    September 28, 2010 at 7:55 pm

    That is interesting.

    Reply
  13. Jemi Fraser says

    September 29, 2010 at 12:20 am

    I often wondered what those numbers meant!

    Reply

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