The UK edition of A Cavern of Black Ice has now gone back to press for the 7th time. This means that previous printing runs of the book have sold out and the publisher needs to print more.

You can tell how many times a favorite book of yours has gone back to press by looking inside the front cover. There, along with the copyright notice, the ISBN number, and the publisher’s details you’ll find the print history given by year: 1999, 2002, 2005 (twice), 2006, etc. However, this may not tell the whole story.

The book in the photo is the fourth edition of Cavern to be published in UK; first there was a hardback, then a trade paperback, then a mass market paperback with a different cover (initially Orbit used the US cover art) and then the current mass market paperback. The details of these print runs are generally not shown as they are considered to be different “editions”. What you can always discover though is the year the book was first published in any form--its first edition. This is important information for collectors, who usually want to own the first edition of a book.