Editing Edition (book) (section)

===Publisher definitions===
Publishers use "first edition" according to their own purposes, and consequently among them the designation is used very inconsistently. The "first edition" of a trade book may be the first iteration of the work printed by the publisher in question or the first iteration of the work that includes a specific set of illustrations or editorial commentary. This means that a "second edition" and subsequent "third edition" will not entail a huge shift from the initial edition but simply contain updates and revisions required with time.

Publishers of non-fiction, academic works, and [[textbook]]s generally distinguish between revisions of the text of the work, by typically citing the dates of the first and latest editions of the work in the copyright page. Exceptions to this [[rule of thumb]] include denominating as a "second edition" a new textbook that has a different format, title, or author because a previous textbook that shares only the same subject matter as the "second edition" is considered the first edition. The reason for this stretch of the definition is often for the short-term marketing advantage of the new textbook, because, although first editions are often considered more valuable than later editions to book collectors, being a subsequent edition of a previous textbook gives the impression that the textbook denominated as a subsequent edition is more authoritative.