Hi all
Fascinating thread guys - I hope you don't mind me dropping in with a few nuggets of info for you relating to the wild, wild world of comic book UPC codes.
Post dated January 11th 2020 - 11th print, UPC 9780930289454 50495
Post dated October 20th 2019 - 13th print, UPC 9780930289454 50595
Aszumilo theorizes these are newsstand books, they're actually copies printed for the mainstream bookstore market (i.e. outside of the direct market).
When DC started publishing trade paperbacks and graphic novels in the 1980's, they had no means to distribute them to traditional bookstores. I'd guess this primarily related to bookstores requiring the books they buy to be returnable, a distribution practice that DC was in the process of running a million miles away from. Enter sister company Warner Books, who printed versions of various DC trades specifically for bookstores (with fancy new covers) up until around 1993.
After the huge sales successes of the Death of Superman and Knightfall, the bookstores wanted in on the action and agreed to buy from DC directly, without Warner Books needing to act as an intermediary. DC started parallel publishing a limited range of books for sale to bookstores. As these books could be returned (unlike the Direct Sales versions), separate barcode became necessary for stock destined for the traditional bookstore market. Bookstore barcodes are constructed as follows -
978 (the UPC code for 'Bookland') / the book's 10 (later 13) digit ISBN number / a check-sum digit (in this case '5') / the price of the book
A lot of DC's early forays into mainstream bookstore distribution were with Star Trek books - check out any DC Star Trek trade from the 90s on eBay and you'll find lots of examples of the same book printed with a Direct Sales barcode and with a bookstore barcode. Both are identified in the indicia as the first print.
You can get a pretty good (though definitely incomplete) idea of what DC were selling in mainstream bookstores in the 1990's by searching the GCD for any book with a barcode that starts '978'.
In late 2005, DC started using the bookstore barcode on all of their books, initially with the Direct Sales barcode alongside it (sometimes on the inside front or back cover). The Direct Sales barcode on TPB's was phased out entirely a little later. I'd guess DC (or their distribution partners) got better at identifying what stock could be returned and what couldn't.
I'm not sure when the 11th and 13th printings of the Killing Joke went on sale, but if you've already identified Direct Sales versions of them it's probably pre-2005 and these '978' UPC versions are books printed specifically for sale to bookstores.
The 6th print identified earlier in the thread *is* a newsstand copy, as ratified by CGC - newsstand barcodes have 2 digits at the end, usually these represent either the month the book went on sale or the date it should be removed from shelves (but not in this case, where the two digits are '95'. I've no idea what that means)
The UPC stickers are from books sold in Waldenbooks (possibly also B. Dalton and other mall bookstores). Lots of DM-only books from the late 80's/early 90's (L.E.G.I.O.N., Deathstroke, Cosmic Odyssey, Legends of the Dark Knight, Sandman, etc.) were sold in Waldenbooks with UPC stickers.
Finally, as someone has mentioned above, Titan (DC's UK licensee) did indeed use the more traditional 'impression' system to track their printings. So something marked as 'First edition' with '10 9 8 7 6 5 4' inside is actually the 4th print (I think!). The 'edition' would only change if there's a substantial change to the interior contents, which obviously is not the case here.
