A book club edition is a copy printed for members of a book club and sold to them at a discount. It often looks like the publisher's trade edition from across a room, but it is a separate, cheaper production, and collectors value it far below the trade first edition.
How to spot it
The quickest checks are on the jacket. A trade jacket usually prints a price on the front flap; a book club jacket usually has no price and may say "Book Club Edition" at the foot of the flap. On American Book of the Month Club copies, look for a small blind stamp, a dot, square or other mark pressed into the lower corner of the back board. UK clubs such as Book Club Associates often print their own name on the spine or title page. Inside, a book club copy may lack the "First Edition" statement or the number line that the trade first carries.
Size is not a reliable test: many club copies are the same size as the trade edition.
What it does to value
For collecting, a book club edition is usually worth a small fraction of the trade first, and often only its value as a reading copy. The exceptions are the rare cases where the club edition came first, or where a club issued something special of its own.
Our book club editions guide goes through each club's tells, and the number line decoder helps check the copyright page.