There's a side story to this book's publication of interest to collectors. The first edition of
'Salem's Lot was priced at $7.95. One of the points of a true first edition
'Salem's Lot dust jacket is the inclusion of an error in the flap copy—the character "Father Cody" is misprinted as "Father Callahan." For many years this was considered the absolute first issue—until 1983, that is. I was working at Doubleday at the time as a publicist and had just finished doing the publicity on
Pet Sematary. One day I was walking by the art department and noticed that the designers were cleaning out their flat files, throwing out the thousands of old dust jackets that had accumulated over the years. I saw a few King jackets lying in the discard file and asked if I could take them. Once I returned to my office, I started leafing through the dust jackets and saw three covers for
'Salem's Lot. I noticed, however, that the retail price was wrong—$8.95 instead of $7.95. However, the "Father Cody" error was present. I called my friend Bill Thompson and asked how this could be. Bill replied that the book had been originally priced at $8.95; however, at the last minute the sales department had decided that it was priced too high and should be reduced by $1. The dust jackets had just been printed with the original price, but they were still at the printer, so Doubleday made the call to have the printer price-clip the $8.95 and run the jackets through the press with the new price of $7.95. I realized that I was holding the three dust jackets that had been sent to the art department before the repricing. Today these three dust jackets, mated with first edition books, reside in the collections of the three top Stephen King collectors in the world. A dealer sold the third one about two years ago for over $10,000.
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Originally Posted by Merlin1958
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