Help with identifiying edition

I recently picked up a copy of Haunted Ground by Erin Hart. My first
thought was that it was a book club edition because there is no price on the
jacket and on the back of the jacket are the digits "0503". The copyright
page however has all the information I would expect to find on a first
edition, full number line, ISBN, library of congress cataloging information,
even the Simon & Schuster Special Sales phone number and email address. I
remembered reading here that some US publishers have stopped putting prices
on jackets. I researched the book on ABE and found that 8vo is the correct
size and that "0503" could be for May 2003, the publishing date. Anyone know
how to identify the first of this title?

Thanks.

Tim Crawford

Tim:

Follow this foolproof method of figuring out if you have a first edition in
hand:

1. Go to Google search engine (www.google.com) and search "identify first
editions" without the quotes. You'll get about 523,000 hits. Choose 2 of the
first ten hits and visit the two websites (a link is provided for each
website).

2. Start reading. Eventually you'll find enough information about the
relevant publisher (in your case, Simon & Schuster) to determine the methods
it uses to differentiate its First Editions. More importantly, you'll become
aware of all the misinformation you've received in the past from us
so-called "experts" who sound so convincing when we talk about number lines,
states, issues, year shown on title page and copyright page, etc. etc. etc.

Happy Researching!

Phil


"Tim Crawford" wrote in message
...
I recently picked up a copy of Haunted Ground by Erin Hart. My first
thought was that it was a book club edition because there is no price on
the
jacket and on the back of the jacket are the digits "0503". The copyright
page however has all the information I would expect to find on a first
edition, full number line, ISBN, library of congress cataloging
information,
even the Simon & Schuster Special Sales phone number and email address. I
remembered reading here that some US publishers have stopped putting
prices
on jackets. I researched the book on ABE and found that 8vo is the correct
size and that "0503" could be for May 2003, the publishing date. Anyone
know
how to identify the first of this title?

Thanks.

Tim Crawford