Fourth Wing First Edition: How to Tell a First Printing from the Rest

Fourth Wing is the book that taught a new generation of readers to ask whether they own a first edition. The answer is on the copyright page, not on the page edges, and it takes a minute to find.

The first edition is the American hardback from Red Tower Books, the imprint Entangled Publishing launched for romantic fantasy a few months before the book came out on 2 May 2023, with the ISBN 9781649374042. Publishers Weekly reports that the first hardback print run was 315,000 copies, enormous for a new imprint, and that 115,000 of them were given black sprayed edges with white stencilled dragons. Those copies sold out within days, according to Fast Company and The New York Times, and the plain-edged balance of the run followed. Every reprint since has had white edges, until the publisher began adding new stencilled designs to later editions.

So a copy with dragons on its edges is an early one. Whether it is a first printing is a separate question, and the number line answers it.

The one-minute check

1. Publisher. The copyright page names Red Tower Books, an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC, and the title page carries the Red Tower mark. A copy from Piatkus is the British edition, a different first altogether (see below).
2. Number line. Find the row of numbers near the foot of the copyright page. If it still includes 1, this is a first printing. Dealers describe later copies as "a number line to 5" or "10 9 8 7 6 5 4", which are fifth and fourth printings of the first edition. Type yours into our number line decoder if you are unsure how to read it.
3. Edges. Black sprayed edges with stencilled white dragons on the first 115,000 copies; plain white on the rest of the first printing and on reprints. Edges confirm an early copy, nothing more.
4. Jacket. The original pictorial jacket with the price on the front flap. Fourth Wing has no documented book club edition, so a missing price is a damaged or replaced jacket rather than a club tell.

If steps one and two pass, you have a first printing. If the edges are sprayed as well, you have one of the copies collectors mean when they say "Fourth Wing first edition", and you can record it as such on the edition's page.

Why the edges matter so much

Sprayed edges were not new in 2023; subscription boxes such as Fairyloot and Illumicrate had used them for years. What was new was a publisher putting them on a large part of a trade first printing. Entangled's founder Liz Pelletier took what The New York Times later called an expensive gamble, and it paid off: the sprayed copies were gone almost at once, demand for the plain copies followed, and the book went on to sell more than 2.7 million copies in the United States by December 2024, according to Circana BookScan figures quoted by Publishers Weekly. Rival publishers copied the idea, which is why so many new novels now arrive with coloured edges.

For collectors the lesson is the one that applies to every modern first: the scarce state is the one made before anyone knew the book would matter. The 115,000 sprayed copies are a small fraction of the millions now in print, and they are the only Fourth Wing hardbacks that are both a first printing and visibly different from what came after.

Every edition, compared

Fourth Wing has been issued in more states than most books manage in a lifetime. The table covers the English-language editions collectors ask about; our special editions pages track the full set as we research them.

Edition	Publisher	Date	Edges	What sets it apart	How to tell it
First edition, first printing	Red Tower Books (Entangled), New York	2 May 2023	Black sprayed, white stencilled dragons, on the first 115,000; plain on the rest	The true first	Number line includes 1; ISBN 9781649374042
Later printings of the first edition	Red Tower Books	2023 onwards	Plain white	Same text, same jacket	Number line stops at 2 or higher
UK first edition	Piatkus (Little, Brown), London	2 May 2023	Plain	The British first, published the same day; gold cover design	Piatkus imprint; ISBN 9780349436999; £25
Fairyloot edition	Fairyloot, printed by Piatkus	October 2023	Stencilled	Signed, foiled boards, reversible jacket; a one-off subscription run	Fairyloot edition page
Holiday (special) edition	Red Tower Books	7 November 2023	Black sprayed	Two bonus chapters from Xaden's point of view, new endpapers; ISBN 9781649376169	Sold alongside Iron Flame; often mislabelled a first on marketplaces
Waterstones exclusive	Piatkus	November 2023	Plain (a 2024 restock used the sprayed American special edition)	Red cover, map endpapers, the two bonus chapters; ISBN 9780349440316	Waterstones edition page
Limited edition paperback	Red Tower Books	17 September 2024	Stencilled on first printings	Bonus chapters and an extra scene	ISBN 9781649377371
Wing and Claw Collection	Red Tower Books	30 September 2025	New stencilled design on first printings	Matching set with Iron Flame and Onyx Storm	Wing and Claw edition page; ISBN 9781649379290

Two warnings follow from the table. The holiday edition and the paperback both have sprayed or stencilled edges and both say "first printing" on their own copyright pages, because they are first printings of their own editions. Neither is the first edition of the book. And a Waterstones or Fairyloot copy is a British Piatkus printing, so its number line, which Piatkus sets as an alternating 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2, tells you about that edition only. Our guide to first edition versus first printing explains why "first printing" on a reissue means less than it sounds.

Reading the number line

Red Tower Books uses a plain descending line. A first printing reads down to 1; each reprint removes the lowest number, so 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 is a second printing and 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 a fourth. Dealers listing Fourth Wing in 2025 described eleventh and fourteenth printings, all dated 2023, which shows how quickly the book went back to press. There is no "First Edition" statement to rely on; the line does the work. Our number lines guide covers the layouts other publishers use.

What copies sell for

This is a young market and it moves fast, so treat any figure as a snapshot. In October 2025 Book Riot found sprayed-edge first printings listed for as much as $575, while Pangobooks' sales data, quoted in the same piece, showed sprayed copies actually selling for up to about $120 against about $33 for plain ones, and sprayed copies making up about 63 per cent of the book's sales on that marketplace. On AbeBooks the same autumn, dealers asked roughly $130 to $500 for sprayed-edge first printings and $60 to $130 for later printings, with a signed later printing offered at $495. Those are asking prices, not sales.

The honest summary is that the sprayed first printing carries a real premium, a signature adds to any copy, and everything else trades close to cover price. We will add recorded sales to the edition page as we verify them; until then the page shows no value rather than a guess. Condition matters as it does for any modern book, and sprayed edges show handling quickly: see book condition grading.

Iron Flame and Onyx Storm

The sequels repeated the formula at a larger scale, which makes their firsts more common, not less.

Iron Flame was published on 7 November 2023 with a deluxe first printing whose edges were sprayed solid black; Entangled said the book sold more than half a million copies on its first day. A reported print run of a million deluxe copies sold out as well. The launch is remembered for its misprints: Variety and The Escapist reported copies with bleeding sprayed edges, missing or upside-down pages and Iron Flame text bound under a Fourth Wing spine, and Entangled offered exchanges. A clean first printing is therefore worth checking page by page, and a misprinted copy is a curiosity rather than a rarity. See the Iron Flame editions.

Onyx Storm followed on 21 January 2025 with a deluxe limited edition whose sprayed edges carry stencilled dragons, a first print run that Entangled put at two million copies, and more than a million pre-orders. Target sold its own exclusive with stencilled edges and colour artwork, Waterstones had a sprayed edition in Britain, and a standard hardback followed. With two million deluxe copies in circulation, the Onyx Storm first printing is a nice thing to own rather than a scarce one. See the Onyx Storm editions.

The fourth book, Threshing Day, is announced for 29 September 2026. If the pattern holds, its first printing will be the largest yet, and the copies worth keeping will be whatever the publisher makes fewest of.

Reading order

The Empyrean books run in a single sequence: Fourth Wing, Iron Flame, Onyx Storm, then Threshing Day. There is no chronological order separate from publication order. The Empyrean series page lists every book with its first edition and lets you tick off the ones you own, and the Rebecca Yarros author page covers her earlier romances, which have their own small following.

Check your copy

Open the Fourth Wing first edition page, compare your copyright page with the points we list, and add the copy to your collection with its printing and condition. If yours is one of the sprayed-edge first printings, say so in the notes: when sales data arrives, that is the state it will be priced against. For the retailer and subscription editions, the special editions section is the place to record them, and our guide to limited and special editions explains which kinds of exclusive tend to hold their value and which do not.