# Is "Joyland" by Stephen King a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Joyland by Stephen King (Hard Case Crime / Titan Books, London and New York, 2013) is identified by: Joyland is a paperback original: the first edition is the Hard Case Crime softcover numbered HCC-112, published 4 June 2013 in the US and 7 June 2013 in the UK from the same Titan Books setting and the same ISBN (978-1-78116-264-4), with pulp-style cover art by Glen Orbik and the price printed on the wrapper (no dust jacket exists for this issue). There is no UK-versus-US precedence question: Hard Case Crime is an imprint of Titan Books (Titan Publishing Group Ltd, London), and one Titan setting served both markets within the same week, with the US on-sale date first.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Joyland is a paperback original: the first edition is the Hard Case Crime softcover numbered HCC-112, published 4 June 2013 in the US and 7 June 2013 in the UK from the same Titan Books setting and the same ISBN (978-1-78116-264-4), with pulp-style cover art by Glen Orbik and the price printed on the wrapper (no dust jacket exists for this issue)
- Identify it by the HCC-112 designation and the Hard Case Crime edition statement dated June 2013 on the copyright page; no UPC-code point of the kind used for The Colorado Kid is documented for this title, so the copyright page is the only check against later printings
- The first printing was very large (reported at roughly one million copies), so condition, not scarcity, governs the paperback
- King initially withheld a digital edition, which is why the physical paperback carried the first publication
- Publisher imprint reads Hard Case Crime / Titan Books, London and New York
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Stephen King |
| Publisher | Hard Case Crime / Titan Books, London and New York |
| Year | 2013 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Joyland is a paperback original: the first edition is the Hard Case Crime softcover numbered HCC-112, published 4 June 2013 in the US and 7… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Joyland is a paperback original: the first edition is the Hard Case Crime softcover numbered HCC-112, published 4 June 2013 in the US and 7 June 2013 in the UK from the same Titan Books setting and the same ISBN (978-1-78116-264-4), with pulp-style cover art by Glen Orbik and the price printed on the wrapper (no dust jacket exists for this issue). Identify it by the HCC-112 designation and the Hard Case Crime edition statement dated June 2013 on the copyright page; no UPC-code point of the kind used for The Colorado Kid is documented for this title, so the copyright page is the only check against later printings. The first printing was very large (reported at roughly one million copies), so condition, not scarcity, governs the paperback. King initially withheld a digital edition, which is why the physical paperback carried the first publication.

## Is this the true first?
There is no UK-versus-US precedence question: Hard Case Crime is an imprint of Titan Books (Titan Publishing Group Ltd, London), and one Titan setting served both markets within the same week, with the US on-sale date first. The paperback original is the first edition; the limited hardcover from Titan followed one week later, on 11 June 2013 — it is the first hardcover state, not a simultaneous issue as sometimes claimed. That hardcover appeared in three states — a gift edition of 1,500 copies, a numbered edition of 724 copies signed by King, and a lettered edition of 26 copies signed by King — all with different cover art by Robert McGinnis and a Joyland park map by Susan Hunt Yule, and all are collected separately from the paperback first.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition is documented. The reprint traps are later Hard Case Crime printings from the same setting (check the copyright page, since the cover is unchanged) and the 2021 Titan omnibus 'The Hard Case Crime Novels of Stephen King: Later / Joyland / The Colorado Kid', which is a first thus and not a first edition of Joyland.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Joyland* by Stephen King a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/joyland
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.