Doubleday

About Doubleday

Doubleday is an American publisher founded in 1897 by Frank Nelson Doubleday and the magazine publisher S. S. McClure, and it is now a New York-based imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group within Penguin Random House.

The firm began as Doubleday & McClure on a loan of five thousand dollars, and its first bestseller was a Rudyard Kipling title. The McClure partnership ended in 1900, when Walter Hines Page joined and the house became Doubleday, Page & Company. It moved its operations to Garden City, New York, in 1910. A merger with the George H. Doran Company in 1927 produced Doubleday, Doran, and the name changed to Doubleday & Company in 1946. Jason Epstein launched the Anchor Books trade paperback line there in 1953, and under Douglas Black, president from 1946, the company opened new book clubs.

Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury published with the house, and Stephen King's first novels, Carrie (1974), 'Salem's Lot (1975), The Shining (1977) and The Stand (1978), appeared under its imprint. Its Crime Club issued Sax Rohmer and Leslie Charteris.

Nelson Doubleday Jr. sold the company to Bertelsmann in 1986. It joined Bantam Doubleday Dell in 1988, which became part of Random House in 1998, and in 2009 Doubleday merged with Knopf to form Knopf Doubleday.

How to identify Doubleday first editions

• Doubleday, Doubleday, Doran and Doubleday & Co. first printings normally carry the words "First Edition" on the copyright page, directly under the copyright notice.
• Book club copies are the main trap. They are usually smaller and lighter than the trade edition, and their dust jackets have no price on the front flap. A trade jacket with a price is a key check.
• Doubleday club jackets were once marked "Book Club Edition" at the foot of the front flap; later ones instead carry a five-digit code on the rear panel.
• A book club copy can still print "First Edition" on the copyright page, so the statement alone does not prove a trade first.
• Doubleday-made books often carry a small printed code in the gutter near the foot of one of the final pages. For some titles a specific code identifies the first printing (for example P6 on page 199 of Carrie, and N7 rather than N40 in Dangerous Visions), so compare against a title bibliography.

US first editions

From the 1920s Doubleday printed "First Edition" on the copyright page of a first printing and left it off every later printing, so an American Doubleday book without the statement is not a first printing.

The copyright page

• Doubleday, Page (by the late 1920s at the latest), Doubleday, Doran (formed by the merger with George H. Doran at the end of 1927) and Doubleday & Co. first printings carry the words "First Edition" on the copyright page, with the copyright notice on the back of the title page. By 1937 the firm said it had done this for many years.
• Later printings carry no printing statement at all: the "First Edition" line is simply dropped, so its absence is the sign of a reprint.
• Where a Doubleday book also has a number line, the lowest figure is the printing whatever order the figures run in, so a first printing shows both the statement and a 1.

Gutter codes

• Doubleday books of the 1970s and 1980s, Stephen King's early novels among them, often carry a short printed code, a letter followed by a number, low in the gutter of a page at or near the end of the text. For some titles a specific code marks the first printing, so check it against a bibliography of the title.
• Sometimes the code is the main point: the first printing of Again, Dangerous Visions (1972), the anthology edited by Harlan Ellison, is identified by the code N7 in the gutter of page 760.

Traps

• Book club copies are the main trap. Doubleday ran its own clubs, among them the Literary Guild, the Doubleday Book Club, the Mystery Guild and the Science Fiction Book Club. Club copies are usually smaller and lighter than the trade edition, on thinner paper, and their jackets have no price on the front flap, so a priced trade jacket is a key check.
• Older Doubleday club jackets say "Book Club Edition" at the foot of the front flap; later ones instead carry a five-digit code, often black figures in a white box, on the back panel. Club jackets also often lack the barcode of the trade jacket.
• A book club copy can still print "First Edition" on the copyright page, because the clubs often printed from the trade plates without removing it, so the statement alone does not prove a trade first.
• Book club printings can carry gutter codes too, so a code alone does not prove a trade copy.

Examples

• The first printing of Stephen King's Carrie (1974) says "First Edition" on the copyright page, has the code P6 in the gutter of page 199, and comes in a jacket priced $5.95 on the front flap.