GURPS Classic - Time Travel (3rd printing 2020)

[Yzor]

I recently picked up a bunch of stuff during the recent sale. One of the pdfs I bought was GURPS Classic Time Travel. It says it is the third printing and has the 2020 publication date - referencing the earlier printing years as 1991 and 1995.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know why in the world this classic book that uses an old edition got a revision 25 years later lol?

[David Johnston2]

I don't think the new printing was revised. It's just been out of print for a long time.

[Anaraxes]

I think in general publishing jargon, a "printing" is just one print run; set up the press and print however-many books. When you run out of books and need some more, you do another printing. Nothing changes in the book.

(Trivia: this is why copyright pages have the "printer's key", that mysterious line of numbers like

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Back when printing plates were physical things and there were camera-ready proof copies that could be edited, it was easy to delete one of those numbers from the printing plate without changing anything else in the book or having to redo all the typesetting or plate etching, so your second printing would just scratch out the "1" and leave

  2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Works fine until you run out of pre-supplied numbers. But then, that was a problem you'd like to have.)

If you actually change the content, that's a new "edition", which meant that you'd have to do the setup all over again, and you'd start your printing counter at "1" again to count print runs of the new edition. If a book collector talks about a "first edition" of some famous or rare book, they usually mean the first printing of the first edition, not just any of the first edition's print runs.

That usage tends to collide with the RPG meaning for "edition", which to gamers really means significant changes to the game mechanics. That leaves us without a distinct word for changes to a book that aren't for another edition in this RPG sense, but do include changes for errata, or perhaps some clarifications, rewording, additions or deletions. This is how we get, say, GURPS Third Edition Vehicles Second Edition, Third Printing.

[Yzor]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

I think in general publishing jargon, a "printing" is just one print run; set up the press and print however-many books. When you run out of books and need some more, you do another printing. Nothing changes in the book.

(Trivia: this is why copyright pages have the "printer's key", that mysterious line of numbers like

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Back when printing plates were physical things and there were camera-ready proof copies that could be edited, it was easy to delete one of those numbers from the printing plate without changing anything else in the book or having to redo all the typesetting or plate etching, so your second printing would just scratch out the "1" and leave

  2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Works fine until you run out of pre-supplied numbers. But then, that was a problem you'd like to have.)

If you actually change the content, that's a new "edition", which meant that you'd have to do the setup all over again, and you'd start your printing counter at "1" again to count print runs of the new edition. If a book collector talks about a "first edition" of some famous or rare book, they usually mean the first printing of the first edition, not just any of the first edition's print runs.

That usage tends to collide with the RPG meaning for "edition", which to gamers really means significant changes to the game mechanics. That leaves us without a distinct word for changes to a book that aren't for another edition in this RPG sense, but do include changes for errata, or perhaps some clarifications, rewording, additions or deletions. This is how we get, say, GURPS Third Edition Vehicles Second Edition, Third Printing.

I appreciate the explanation. I guess I knew some of that already, having been an avid reader and gamer, I guess I thought because it was a pdf that a "printing" might include changes. I had the impression that some RPG companies fix error/typos at least, etc on new printings but maybe I am wrong. I had no idea about the plates and scratching out the number - that's really cool to learn.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Yzor

Out of curiosity, does anyone know why in the world this classic book that uses an old edition got a revision 25 years later lol?

In addition to what Anaraxes said, the new Printing was probably considered to be when they set up the Classic as a Print on Demand at Amazon. It likely incorporated Errata, which made it a new "Printing." While you may have bought the PDF, you got the PDF version of the newer Print On Demand version.

[Phil Masters]

New printings can include errata fixes; in the case of a few GURPS books, this can include whole paragraphs changing, and illustrations changing to make room for changed text. How far you can go with that before you ought to call it a new edition, in the old-fashioned publishing sense, may be debatable, but yeah, new RPG editions tend to be substantive rules changes, not just tweaks for clarity or balance. You’ll sometimes see decimal places on edition numbers, or words like “Revised” on the cover, in attempts to square that circle.

The appearance of Print on Demand technology has basically made a nonsense of the old “Nth printing” idea anyway. A print run used to be a serious thing, with X hundred or thousand copies coming off the presses and going out to warehouses. Nowadays, you can have a PDF sitting on Amazon’s servers and copies being printed out to order, one at a time. Now, a new “printing” is if anything a revision to that PDF. Which is, yes, probably what that third printing of Time Travel amounts to; the cleaned-up and prepared file that SJG uploaded in 2020.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

The appearance of Print on Demand technology has basically made a nonsense of the old “Nth printing” idea anyway.

For this reason SJGames seems to have moved to "File Version X.X" for any of the books released originally in PDF rather than "Nth Printing." However, there's still a weird flux having to deal with all the old books originally released in dead tree but which are moving to PDF for their continued existence.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Yzor

I had no idea about the plates and scratching out the number - that's really cool to learn.

Those physical plates are also the reason why people cared much about printing numbers in the first place. Yes the intended text is identical, but physical plates wear out. The more times you've use them, the less sharp the impressions printed are, so copies of the book from the first printing would have crisper text and clearer images than the 10th printing even though none of the content changed intentionally. It doesn't really matter anymore, but it's a TRADITION.

[Yzor]

I appreciate all the responses. If I could, I'd upvote/like or assign Fnord-karma to all the answers!

[dcarson]

And with multiple country, multiple printers arguments about what is the true first edition.