# Is "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (Gollancz, 2006) is identified by: True first is the Gollancz hardcover, London, June 2006 (ISBN 0-575-07694-1). Census claim confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- True first is the Gollancz hardcover, London, June 2006 (ISBN 0-575-07694-1)
- The first printing carries the Gollancz number line "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2" on the copyright page; the 1 must be present
- The author's first book
- Priced jacket: price present at the flap
- Dealers consistently report that the jacket's foil coating crinkles and scuffs very easily and that this flaw is present on nearly all copies — it is a characteristic of the issue, not a distinguishing point between printings
- A small first hardcover printing is widely reported in the trade (a figure of 1,500 copies is repeated), but that number traces to dealer copy and is not independently documented; treat it as unconfirmed
- Publisher imprint reads Gollancz

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Scott Lynch |
| Publisher | Gollancz |
| Year | 2006 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | True first is the Gollancz hardcover, London, June 2006 (ISBN 0-575-07694-1) |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
True first is the Gollancz hardcover, London, June 2006 (ISBN 0-575-07694-1). The first printing carries the Gollancz number line "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2" on the copyright page; the 1 must be present. The author's first book. Priced jacket: price present at the flap. Dealers consistently report that the jacket's foil coating crinkles and scuffs very easily and that this flaw is present on nearly all copies — it is a characteristic of the issue, not a distinguishing point between printings. A small first hardcover printing is widely reported in the trade (a figure of 1,500 copies is repeated), but that number traces to dealer copy and is not independently documented; treat it as unconfirmed. Sources also conflict on whether Gollancz issued a simultaneous 2006 trade paperback: one dealer says yes, while the ISBN record for the Gollancz trade paperback (0-575-07975-4) dates it to 2007. The hardcover is the collected first either way.

## Is this the true first?
Census claim confirmed. The Gollancz UK hardcover (1 June 2006) precedes the first US edition, Bantam Spectra hardcover, New York (27 June 2006, ISBN 0-553-80467-7, 499pp) by roughly four weeks. Both are collected — the Gollancz as the true first, the Bantam as the first American edition, which unlike many US-follows-UK cases is itself a hardcover.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented for either the Gollancz or the Bantam first. "First thus" traps: the Gollancz Collector's Tenth Anniversary Edition (2016, ISBN 9781473216792) is a 2006-dated-looking collector hardcover but a 2016 book, and the later Gollancz trade paperback (0-575-07975-4) and Orbit reissues are not firsts.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Lies of Locke Lamora* by Scott Lynch a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-lies-of-locke-lamora
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.