Whether you're a collector or bookseller, one of the first questions you'll need to be able to answer is, "Is it a first edition?" You can find the answers in this seventh edition of A Pocket Guide to the Identification of First Editions. This latest revision has in excess of 2000 items of information. Compiled over the last ten years, the Seventh Edition will comprise new publishers since 2000, publishers not included in the Sixth Edition, and changes to existing publishers.

You'll know exactly what to look for on the copyright pages of books you are examining. And whenever possible, it pinpoints when a publisher changed methods of identification: many did, some several times in their publishing history. Other guides to first editions merely list the publishers' statements about first edition identification; McBride's scholarship is based on statements compared with thousands of personal examinations of books by publishers over the full span of their existence to determine consistency and changes of methods.