Berkley is a New York paperback-led imprint founded in 1955, owned by Putnam from 1965 and now part of Penguin Random House. Many of its books are reprints, so check whether a title first appeared elsewhere.
Berkley is a New York paperback and hardback imprint founded in 1955 by Charles Byrne and Frederic Klein, two former Avon employees, and now part of the Penguin Publishing Group at Penguin Random House.
Berkley began as an independent paperback house. Its Berkley Medallion line published the American edition of J. G. Ballard's The Drowned World in 1962, following Victor Gollancz's London edition that year. G. P. Putnam's Sons bought Berkley in 1965, and when Penguin bought Putnam in 1996 Berkley came with it, joining Penguin Random House after the 2013 merger.
Its authors have included Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Dean Koontz, Patricia Cornwell, Frank Herbert, Robert A. Heinlein and Christine Feehan. Berkley issued the first edition of Vengeance in Death in Nora Roberts's In Death series, written as J. D. Robb, which began with Naked in Death in July 1995.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Berkley's practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify Berkley first editions
What to look for
1950s to 1970s
Berkley was chiefly a mass-market paperback house whose list mixed reprints of books that other firms had already published with paperback originals. Before paying a first-edition price, find out whether the title first came out elsewhere: if it did, the Berkley copy is a later edition however early its printing.
1980s to 2000s
Where the copyright page has a number line, the lowest figure present is the printing, so a first printing must show a "1". If a "First Edition" line sits beside the number line, go by the number line, since some publishers leave that wording in on reprints.
1950s to 1970s - Berkley was chiefly a mass-market paperback house whose list mixed reprints of books that other firms had already published with paperback originals. Before paying a first-edition price, find out whether the title first came out elsewhere: if it did, the Berkley copy is a later edition however early its printing. 1980s to 2000s - Where the copyright page has a number line, the low
How many Berkley books does MyVolumes track?
We track 197 editions published by Berkley, 152 of them first editions, across 197 books.
