It could be that I’m the only person who didn’t know this already, but last week I learned what some of the codes on the copyright page of a book mean.

A friend of my husband’s, who happened to be a lawyer, sent him a message saying he’d purchased a paperback copy of The Eighth Day and was pleased to notice that it was printed by one of his clients, a printing company in central Pennsylvania. Bob asked how he could tell and got a brief lesson on some of the codes.

Printing Code TED 4th

The OPM in the middle of that line is the code for the printing company. On the left, the smallest number represents the year the book was printed (2015), and on the right, the smallest number represents the print run. This book happens to be from the 4th print run of the paperback copy of The Eighth Day.

We compared this to an older copy on my bookshelf. Can you read the code?

Printing Code TED 1st

Yup, this is from the 1st print run of TED, which was printed in 2014 even though it wasn’t released until January 2015.

Of course I had to check out a copy of The Caged Graves, too, although it was printed by a different company and the coding was slightly different.

Printing Code CG

I can tell this copy came from the 2nd print run, but I don’t know where they hide the year.

Did you already know this? Do you have any secret codes of your own to share?