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Ah, at last, something in my field!
According to Crown's statement for 1981 regarding their method of identifying firsts, Crown Publishing in 1978 used absolutely no indicator of 1st edition on a first printing. However, if it was anything but a first printing, the reprint history is listed.
This practice was abandoned by Crown in 1980-1 as they switched to the more user friendly method of listing a string of numbers in descending order on the copyright page, with the lowest visible number corresponding to the particular printing. That is to say that you'd now see something like this:
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
As the numeral 'one' is present, the printing would be a first printing. However, if the numbers looked like this:
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
you'd be holding a 3rd printing. Printing and edition are used interchangeably by many folks, but this is not always accurate. It is possible to have a 1st edition third printing of a book as many publishers consider a new 'edition' to have changes to it, whereas a 'printing' means it was likely run from the same plates, but at a later date, with no changes except to the printing history page. To confuse matters more, there is no standard used by all publishing houses across the board to identify their editions or printings. One uses the numeric device mentioned above while another may use an alpha listing along the same lines, and yet another may actually use the words 'First Edition' as a designation. Others may state 'First Edition' but then also have the numeric string, where the numbers are the actual indicators regardless of the words 'First Edition'. So, quite frankly, unless you know the methods used by a particular publishing house in a particular period you really cannot tell a first from a later printing. Oh, and did I mention that any given publishing house has likely changed their methodology over the years, moving from one designation to another? Fun huh? Fortunately I keep abreast of the various identifiers used by most of the mainstream publishers as well as many of the minor or small press publishers.
Anyway, my point about being unsure of the exact true first for The Wicker Man has nothing to do with editions, as I doubt that the Crown edition ever went beyond a single printing. My problem stems from the question of whether or not a British edition was published prior to the American hardcover, in paperback or hardcover format. Being a British film and book, I would have thought a UK paperback would've been out before the American book, but with The Wicker Man's bizarre history, it is really hard to tell without doing a bit of research, which I have neither the time nor the inclination to undertake.
Without actually inspecting your book, I'd suspect that you have at least the first American edition (keeping in mind that this may be a true first if no UK edition precedes it). Now, I wonder if there was ever a bookclub edition...as that is an entirely different kettle of fish. Bookclub editions can look exactly the same as a proper book, although they are generally made using cheaper paper and as a result will be thinner or smaller than the legitimate book. Many bookclubs also tend to have ragged cut pages, but then again so do some proper book releases, so this alone is certainly an unreliable method of determining the state. Most bookclub editions either state 'Book Club' inside the front cover (often clipped out by unscrupulous dealers) or will carry a blind stamp of the club logo or a symbol on the bottom rear near the spine. On the other hand, I've seen book club books that use the exact same plates as the true first and maintain a pretty good level of quality, so identification can be very difficult.
I despise book club editions as they are a nuisance. I was once called to the local University to value a recent donation of books to their library. 17 bloody great boxes of books, and every one of them a bookclub edition. I was not terribly pleased to have wasted an afternoon digging through entirely worthless books. :(
Hope that was helpful.
Cheers!
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