# Is "Coma" by Robin Cook a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Coma by Robin Cook (Little, Brown and Company, 1977) is identified by: The first printing states the first edition on the copyright page, per Little, Brown's practice since 1940 of stating "First Edition" or "First Printing"; number rows only entered the house's books in the late 1970s, so the stated printing — not a number line — is the operative point on this title. The census claim is confirmed: Little, Brown, Boston (imprint reading Boston and Toronto), 1977 is the true first.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The first printing states the first edition on the copyright page, per Little, Brown's practice since 1940 of stating "First Edition" or "First Printing"; number rows only entered the house's books in the late 1970s, so the stated printing — not a number line — is the operative point on this title
- Binding is the publisher's quarter cloth over paper-covered boards, two-toned (recorded by dealers as a dark spine over grey boards)
- The jacket should be priced with the price present at the front flap and, critically, must not be marked as a club jacket
- Reports of a blind-stamped emblem to the front board appear in a single lower-grade source and are deliberately not reproduced here, since a blindstamp is also the classic club tell and repeating it unconfirmed would invert the test
- Publisher imprint reads Little, Brown and Company
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Robin Cook |
| Publisher | Little, Brown and Company |
| Year | 1977 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The first printing states the first edition on the copyright page, per Little, Brown's practice since 1940 of stating "First Edition" or… |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
The first printing states the first edition on the copyright page, per Little, Brown's practice since 1940 of stating "First Edition" or "First Printing"; number rows only entered the house's books in the late 1970s, so the stated printing — not a number line — is the operative point on this title. Binding is the publisher's quarter cloth over paper-covered boards, two-toned (recorded by dealers as a dark spine over grey boards). The jacket should be priced with the price present at the front flap and, critically, must not be marked as a club jacket. Reports of a blind-stamped emblem to the front board appear in a single lower-grade source and are deliberately not reproduced here, since a blindstamp is also the classic club tell and repeating it unconfirmed would invert the test.

## Is this the true first?
The census claim is confirmed: Little, Brown, Boston (imprint reading Boston and Toronto), 1977 is the true first. The UK issue followed the same year from Pan Books in association with Macmillan, London, 1977, per the Wellcome Collection catalogue record; the US edition holds precedence. Correction to a widespread dealer error: Coma is repeatedly catalogued as "the author's first book", which is wrong — Cook's first novel was Year of the Intern (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972). Coma is his breakthrough and the founding modern medical thriller, but it is not his debut, and copies described as his first book are misdescribed.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Book-club copies of Coma are common and are documented with an unusually clean tell for this title: the club issue states "Book Club Edition" on the dust jacket itself, and its copyright page does not state the first edition. Check both — a trade first in a club jacket, and a club book in a priced jacket, are both marriages that turn up in the trade.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Coma* by Robin Cook a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/coma
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.