# Is "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2000) is identified by: The first printing is the Little, Brown hardcover, ISBN 0316777722 / 9780316777728, and is identified on the copyright page by a "First Edition" statement together with a complete descending number line reading 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. US precedes; the census claim is correct.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The first printing is the Little, Brown hardcover, ISBN 0316777722 / 9780316777728, and is identified on the copyright page by a "First Edition" statement together with a complete descending number line reading 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
- Later printings drop the low digits from the left of that key, so any line beginning with 2 or higher is a later printing; this matches Little, Brown's documented house practice from the late 1970s onward of pairing a "First Printing"/"First Edition" designation with a 10-to-1 key
- The jacket should be present and priced at the front flap (price present at the flap, unclipped)
- No first-state text errors, binding variants, or jacket-state points are documented for this title; the Back Bay softcover
- and the later Grand Central and large-print issues are reprints, not firsts
- Publisher imprint reads Little, Brown and Company
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | David Sedaris |
| Publisher | Little, Brown and Company |
| Year | 2000 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The first printing is the Little, Brown hardcover, ISBN 0316777722 / 9780316777728, and is identified on the copyright page by a "First… |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
The first printing is the Little, Brown hardcover, ISBN 0316777722 / 9780316777728, and is identified on the copyright page by a "First Edition" statement together with a complete descending number line reading 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. Later printings drop the low digits from the left of that key, so any line beginning with 2 or higher is a later printing; this matches Little, Brown's documented house practice from the late 1970s onward of pairing a "First Printing"/"First Edition" designation with a 10-to-1 key. The jacket should be present and priced at the front flap (price present at the flap, unclipped). No first-state text errors, binding variants, or jacket-state points are documented for this title; the Back Bay softcover (2001) and the later Grand Central and large-print issues are reprints, not firsts.

## Is this the true first?
US precedes; the census claim is correct. Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2000, is the true first and the only edition collected as such. There is no competing UK hardcover: Britain received the book from Abacus in paperback (ISBN 0349113904, 2001; reissued as 0349113912, 2002), well after the US hardcover, so no UK-vs-US precedence question arises here.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
A club issue exists under a separate ISBN, 9780965031134 / 0965031136, and dealers routinely qualify trade firsts with "not book club" as a negative identifier. Club copies show the standard documented tells rather than title-specific ones: no price present at the jacket front flap and no barcode block on the rear jacket panel, a small blind-stamp (dot, square, or similar impression, inkless and visible only at a raking angle) at the lower rear board near the spine, and boards thinner and lighter than the trade issue. Club copies do not carry the trade copyright-page key described above.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Me Talk Pretty One Day* by David Sedaris a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/me-talk-pretty-one-day
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.