Warner Books, New York, 1970 to 2007, now Grand Central Publishing at Hachette. Firsts from the 1980s state "First Printing" with month and year above a number line that must include 1.
Warner Books is a publisher based in New York City, founded in 2006. We track 255 editions it published between 1726 and 2007, 154 of them first editions across 251 books. How Warner Books marked its first editions is set out below, with a checker for the year on your title page.
About Warner Books
Warner Books was an American trade publisher created in 1970, when its corporate parent (Kinney National Company, later Warner Communications) bought the New York paperback house Paperback Library; in 2007 it was renamed Grand Central Publishing under Hachette Book Group.
Warner Books acquired the Popular Library paperback line from Fawcett in 1982 and kept it going until about 1990. In 1996 it was joined with Little, Brown to form Time Warner Trade Publishing, later the Time Warner Book Group. Its bestsellers included Robert James Waller's The Bridges of Madison County (1992), which spent 164 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Time Warner sold the book group to Lagardère's Hachette Livre on 31 March 2006, and it was renamed Hachette Book Group USA. In 2007 the Warner Books imprint was renamed Grand Central Publishing, after the new offices' closeness to Grand Central Terminal, and most of its imprints were pooled into it, Warner Forever and Warner Vision continuing as Forever and Vision.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Warner Books's practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify Warner Books first editions
What to look for
Warner grew out of a paperback reprint house and published both paperbacks and hardbacks. A paperback that follows a hardback is at most a first paperback printing, not a true first, so check whether a hardback came first. A US book club copy can usually be told from the trade edition by several signs: a jacket with no price, a small blind stamp (often a dot) pressed into the lower back board, and a smaller, more cheaply made book. A few Book of the Month Club jackets of the 1970s did show a price on the front flap, so check the other signs too.
1970s
UNVERIFIED: Warner Paperback Library books, like the Paperback Library list before them, state "First printing" with the month and year.
1980s to 2006
Warner first printings state "First Printing" with the month and year on the copyright page, directly above a number line.
The number line must still contain 1: the lowest number showing is the printing.
Examples of the pattern: Word of Honor (1985), Scarlett (1991), Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999) and Shoot the Moon (2004).
From 2007
New books from 2007 on carry the Grand Central Publishing name, so a copy labelled Warner Books predates the change. The number line rule still applies.
Warner grew out of a paperback reprint house and published both paperbacks and hardbacks. A paperback that follows a hardback is at most a first paperback printing, not a true first, so check whether a hardback came first. A US book club copy can usually be told from the trade edition by several signs: a jacket with no price, a small blind stamp (often a dot) pressed into the lower back board, and
How many Warner Books books does MyVolumes track?
We track 255 editions published by Warner Books, 154 of them first editions, across 251 books.
