ABC’s of Book Collecting : Advance Copy

During the last century, publishers extended the practice of circulating advance copies of a new book to reviewers, chosen booksellers, judges of book-clubs, etc., besides those provided to their own travellers ‘subscribing’ it to the trade. Such copies are normally either final proofs or the first sheets to be gathered of the main run. They are often put up in plain or printed wrappers. But they may be bound; and if so the binding may occasionally retain a feature discarded in the
published edition, or lack some final detail, or even be of a different colour or material (see trial binding). Such advance copies as show variations from the published edition, whether of text or binding, are naturally of interest to the keen collector. Even where no variations have yet been noticed, they are by their nature examples of an early state of the printed text (see issues and states), and they may on occasion be useful to the bibliographer confronted with a doubtful point in the published edition. But they do not (as is sometimes suggested) represent a first or early issue in the proper sense of the word; nor can the existence of fifty advance copies of a book prejudice in any way the firstness of the first edition as
issued on the day of publication.