Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, From A Game of Thrones to A Dance with Drago (27 page)

Although today’s economic climate is tough, there are a multitude of small and not-so-small presses producing short-run first editions of highly artistic limited editions, not only of Martin’s work, but of a wide range of authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. In fact, there are probably so many limited editions that only the most well-heeled collectors can even attempt a complete genre collection, which was something that could be fairly easily done in earlier decades.

Despite hand-wringing from the doomsayers—which has been going on since well before Dickens; I suspect that if there’d been publishers in Homer’s time, he’d have heard pretty much the same poor-mouthing as we do today—the publishing industry is not going to go away anytime soon. Both e-books and paper books will remain part of their business model, in some proportion or another, for the foreseeable future. That’s not to say that ideas of what constitute a book or even publication are not changing.

Since the proliferation of e-books makes revision easy for even published texts, an artistic question arises regarding the concept of the “finished work.” Some authors—particular examples in the science fiction and fantasy field are Michael Moorcock and F. Paul Wilson—frequently revisit older works, polishing or even substantially altering them to fit more readily into a series framework.

As a reader and collector both, I have mixed feelings about this practice, but it seems Ice and Fire fans have little to worry about on this score. Martin has no plans to revise earlier volumes. “The work is the work,” he told me not long ago. “Nothing has been cut from it, so there’s nothing to put back in.” Any side-trips into his universe will continue with shorter works (e.g., the Dunk and Egg stories) to illuminate incidents outside the main story. There will be no need to collect later editions of Ice and Fire volumes to remain
au courant
with the finished story.

If you are going to collect any editions of the series, there are some things you should probably consider.

As with any field of collectibles, book collectors have constructed their own set of rules, a shared common wisdom, built up over centuries of experience, though personally I regard these rules, as the saying goes, more as guidelines. Shape your collection the way you want, not by strict laws that might diminish your enjoyment. For example, common wisdom says that if you collect signed books you should have the author write just his or her name—called “flatsigning”—without a personal inscription, because some dealers believe that a flatsigned book is easier to sell and thus more valuable than one signed, “To My Dearest Humperdink.”

I think that’s a mistake. First, I don’t particularly care how much my collection will someday sell for, because when it’s dispersed I’ll be dead and its monetary value will be entirely irrelevant to me. Second, I enjoy signed books because of the sense of personal connection they gives you to the authors. An inscribed book entails a closer connection than one simply signed. Even if the book isn’t inscribed to me personally, the sentiment reveals something of the author’s thoughts and personality. To me that makes the volume more interesting and thus more valuable than a simple signature.

But that’s me. As a collector you should follow your own rules. With that in mind, though, there are some basic parameters that lift an ordinary volume into the collectible class. These parameters fall into three areas: primacy, scarcity, and aesthetics. Once these factors are taken into consideration, condition also comes into play. I shall briefly examine these categories as they pertain to collectibility, then relate them to the Ice and Fire books.

Primacy relates to the notion of first edition, which may be more complicated than you think. Collectors value the earliest iteration of a title. Information regarding this can usually be found on the indicia or copyright page, which appears after the title page and before the text begins. Although for some publishers in certain time periods this information is tricky to interpret, it’s completely straightforward for all the Ice and Fire books. I’ll use just one as an example, but the data is presented in a similar manner for all. The American first edition of the first volume,
A Game of Thrones
, reads:

       
A Bantam/Spectra Book / September 1996

       
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The first British edition reads:

       
HarperCollins Publisher 1996/123456789

The numbers refer to the specific print run (more on which can be found below).

Sometimes fine distinctions are made when changes occur partway through a print run, such as a change in color or minor textual addition or subtraction on the dust jacket. Varieties such as these are called “states,” and again, it’s up to the individual collector to decide what’s significant enough to him or her to worry about. Fortunately, this complication doesn’t apply to Ice and Fire because no distinctions of state have arisen, at least in the British and American editions.

The notion of “first edition” is also blurred by some sellers who describe a particular book as “first edition, nth printing.” The number of a specific book’s actual print run can be found among the indicia, as noted above. I’ve frequently observed this distinction in listings of Ice and Fire titles. Again, it’s up to individual collectors, but for the most part you will not find much of a premium on early, but non-first, print runs for any of the Ice and Fire books.

Scarcity is somewhat related to primacy. First editions commonly have smaller print runs than accumulated later editions, and the initial book in a successful series usually has a smaller first print run than subsequent titles. That’s certainly the case with Ice and Fire. The series has grown enormously more popular with each volume, so each subsequent title has larger and larger first editions. Only a few thousand copies were printed in the original edition of
A Game of Thrones
compared to several hundred thousand for
A Dance with Dragons
. All five books have gone through numerous printings and editions. Although trade paperbacks and mass market paperbacks of
Dance
haven’t appeared as of this writing, it’s only a matter of time until they do.

Once Ice and Fire had become well established, Meisha Merlin published a limited, signed edition with extensive artwork by notable science fiction and fantasy artists. These books instantly became a big hit on the collectible book market. When Merlin went out of business, Subterranean Press took over the limited edition niche with
A Storm of Swords
and will undoubtedly continue through to the end of the series. They have also announced plans to republish the two Meisha Merlin volumes in a format identical to the Subterranean volumes. This is an unusual circumstance, but it shows the continually increasing popularity of the series. My guess is that these volumes will also be eagerly embraced by the collector community.

Limited editions are highly sought after because of the (usual) high aesthetic quality of their design, which include such elements as special slipcases, fine endpapers, page edge gilding, and reams of artwork by the finest artists in the field. Throw in autographs by author and artists with guaranteed authentic signatures, and print runs limited to the hundreds rather than the thousands produced by the big publishers, and you have a product popular among discerning collectors of the particular writer, the genre, or even simply fine art and writing in general.

Meisha Merlin published 448 numbered copies and 52 lettered (a to zz) copies of
A Game of Thrones
in 2002 and
A Clash of Kings
in 2005. These volumes sold well even before publication, since collectors routinely preorder or subscribe to the entire series. Generally speaking, similarly numbered or lettered sets are preferable to sets with varied numbers or letters but, of course, are also much harder to assemble if you’re late to the game.

Subterranean Press, taking up the Ice and Fire gauntlet when Merlin went out of business, produced similar quantities of numbered and lettered editions of
A Storm of Swords
in 2008 and
A Feast for Crows
in 2009, with plans to continue the series as more titles become available.
A Dance with Dragons
is scheduled for publication in the spring of 2012. As previously mentioned, they also have plans to release their own versions of the first two titles. Their format is different than Merlin’s, with each title broken into two volumes.

It would be difficult to form a collection of the limiteds at this late date. Current owners of these volumes are proving quite loyal to the series and are either unwilling to sell their copies or, if willing, believe almost universally that the market will go nowhere but up.

The following information, taken from the AbeBooks website, which has 40,000,000 books for sale in its database, is a snapshot of the market in a precise moment of time (in this case, early December 2011) but adequately reflects the general state of availability and cost of the Ice and Fire titles.

The only Meisha Merlin/Subterranean Press limited editions currently on the market are a complete set of the first four titles. The set is from the numbered release (#38) and is described as “as new.” The asking price is $10,000.

If collecting the early limited editions seems impossible at this time, there is always the first editions to fall back on. Ice and Fire has had remarkable success throughout the world, so you may be interested in acquiring the first edition in your native language, but the very popularity of the series, which has appeared in dozens of countries in almost every major language around the world, makes it impossible to examine non-English editions in any detail.

Instead, I will establish publication primacy in the English language. Fortunately, with one somewhat tricky exception, that’s easy. I first laid out the groundwork for identifying the first worldwide editions in an article for
Firsts
magazine, “Collecting George R.R. Martin,” back in 2001.

A Game of Thrones
is the tricky one. Supposedly released simultaneously by HarperCollins Voyager (UK) and Bantam Spectra (US) in 1996, the Bantam American release is the true first wordwide edition, actually preceding the British edition into print by several months. Although the indicia page of the Bantam edition lists the publication date as September, Bantam actually rushed
Game
into print for the American Booksellers Association convention in May 1996. Additional copies also were distributed at the Westercon science fiction convention over the 1996 Fourth of July weekend.

This is good news for collectors who collect worldwide firsts. Although the initial print run for Bantam’s
A Game of Thrones
was rather small, it certainly eclipsed HarperCollins’ UK run of 1,500 copies, especially considering that many of the HarperCollins books were purchased by libraries and are precluded from the collectors’ market by condition problems.

The HarperCollins editions of the next three titles,
A Clash of Kings
(1998),
A Storm of Swords
(2000), and
A Feast for Crows
(2005), were all released prior to the Bantam US editions and are the worldwide firsts.

A Dance with Dragons
was a simultaneous 2011 release in America and the United Kingdom by their respective publishers, so basically they could be described as co-firsts. However, Martin has brought up an interesting point. Both British and American bookstores held midnight release parties on the first “day” of the book’s official release. And it must be admitted that midnight falls first in Britain. Is that enough to establish primacy for the British edition? I’ll leave that to the individual collector to ponder.

Primacy is thus established for the Bantam (American) edition for the first volume, the HarperCollins (British) editions for the next three, with the fifth having co-firsts. Given the essential impossibility of collecting the British editions, many collectors, especially Americans, have been content to target the Bantam editions as firsts. Of course, they are obviously the American firsts.

Other printings and editions for all titles, with different covers and in different formats, quickly followed. Some—for example, the HarperCollins slipcased hardcovers, limited to a thousand sets—may ultimately prove popular with collectors. The only limited editions considered here, however, are the Meisha Merlin/Subterranean Press numbered/lettered editions, due to their scarcity, artistic quality, and publisher-authenticated signatures of artists and authors.

Once factors of primacy remove later printings and editions from collectible consideration, condition becomes important. There’s no science to ascertaining condition, despite what the coin, baseball card, and comic book graders would have you believe. It’s all opinion. Granted, experienced, educated opinion is worth more than naive, hopeful, or (especially) unscrupulous opinion. If you enter any field of collecting, you must educate yourself on its standards and gain a knowledgeable opinion about any object you plan to acquire.

The number of Ice and Fire books in the various first print runs, especially for the first three volumes, are limited, but we must also remember that all were recently published. As such, only those books in top condition, Near Fine or better—dust jacket and book itself—can be considered collectible.