11 Scribes · All titles · Scribner Era (1998-present)

Full Dark, No Stars Common

2010 · Scribner (Simon & Schuster), New York
First-edition cover of Full Dark, No Stars
First-edition jacket (first edition (verified vs jacket)) · source

What it’s about

A quartet of dark novellas that each strand an ordinary person in an extraordinary moral crisis: a 1920s Nebraska farmer who conspires against his wife over a land sale, a writer who survives a brutal roadside assault, a man who stumbles onto a horrifying truth about his husband of decades, and a woman who strikes a strange bargain to escape financial ruin. King probes what regular people are capable of when pushed to the edge — the retribution, the secrets, and the price each act exacts.

Significance Solo Stephen King collection (under his own name) gathering four novellas — "1922," "Big Driver," "Fair Extension," and "A Good Marriage" — three of which were adapted to film, with "1922" becoming a 2017 Netflix feature and "A Good Marriage" scripted by King himself.

Is this the true first?Yes. The Scribner trade hardcover (Nov 9, 2010) is the true first edition. No small-press limited preceded the trade in this case — the Cemetery Dance limited/lettered editions came LATER and are oversized collector reprints, not the first publication. There is no paperback original; this is a hardcover-first title.
The Scribner trade hardcover IS the true first edition, first printing. Unlike the early-career titles where a Donald M. Grant / Philtrum / Land of Enchantment small press preceded the trade, nothing precedes the 2010 Scribner trade printing here. The Cemetery Dance editions (Slipcased Gift 1,750 / Signed Limited 750 / Lettered 52) are a separately published, oversized illustrated collector set issued after the Scribner trade and are NOT the bibliographic first. The 2011 trade paperback adds a fifth novella ("Under the Weather") and is a later/different edition, not a first.

First-printing points at a glance

First-printing statementScribner convention (1998+): a true first states "First Edition" on the copyright page AND carries the full number line. BOTH must be present. (The copyright page reads "First Scribner hardcover edition" / "First Edition" language with the number line below it.)
Number line"1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2" — a first printing shows the full line ending with the "1" present (i.e., the "1" still in the row). Later printings drop the low digit(s): a second printing's lowest number would no longer be 1. Confirmed by stephenkingcollector.com and corroborated by multiple dealer first-printing listings.
Gutter / printer codeN/A (Scribner era — no Doubleday-style gutter code; that convention applies only to the 1974-1983 Doubleday King titles).
First printing — copiesNot publicly disclosed
First jacket price$27.99 (Upper front flap of the dust jacket (top corner). Canadian price typically printed alongside/below. A price-clipped jacket (corner cut away) hides this and reduces value.)
Board (panel) colorBlue boards (paper-over-boards panels). Quarter-bound with black cloth at the spine. (Per dealer descriptions; surfaced from multiple AbeBooks listing summaries — treat as medium confidence vs the price/number-line which are high.)
Spine / center bindingBlack cloth spine (quarter-cloth binding), spine stamped/lettered in red.
Binding styleQuarter-bound hardcover: black cloth spine over blue paper-covered boards, sewn binding. Two-tone (quarter-cloth) rather than full-cloth.
Topstain / endpapersUNVERIFIED — no notable topstain reported (standard plain top edge); endpapers on the trade first appear plain/unprinted. (The illustrated/embossed endpapers belong to the Cemetery Dance limited, NOT the Scribner trade.)

Dust jacket

Dark photographic jacket with black/blue tonality; moody atmospheric cover image (Jeff Bark photograph) fitting the four-novella noir/horror theme. Title "FULL DARK, NO STARS" and "STEPHEN KING" prominent. Rear panel carries blurb/author material. Distinct from the Cemetery Dance set, which uses Tomislav Tikulin cover art and interior illustrations.

Art / design: Front cover photograph by Jeff Bark (credited cover photographer). Scribner in-house jacket design. Author photo on rear panel/flap.

reference photohttps://www.stephenkingcollector.com/1st/fulldarknostars.htmlreference photohttps://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/photos-of-full-dark-no-stars/reference photohttps://johnatkinsonbooks.co.uk/book/stephen-king-full-dark-no-stars-first-us-edition-2010/
Book-club edition & fakes — how to spot a wrong copyWatch for a Book-Club (BOMC) hardcover of this title: it will LACK the "$27.99" price on the front flap (no price, or "Book Club Edition" printed on the lower front flap), often shows a small blind-stamp (indented dot/circle/square) on the lower-rear board, uses thinner/cheaper paper, a slightly smaller trim, and may be glued rather than sewn. Crucially for a Scribner-era book, a BCE will typically NOT carry the full "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2" number line and will not state "First Edition." If it says "First Edition" AND has the full number line ending in 1 AND a $27.99 priced (unclipped) jacket, it is the trade first, not a club copy.

Also watch for: Married jackets (a priced first-printing jacket placed on a club book body, or vice versa) — verify the jacket price matches a true-first body with "First Edition" + full number line. Price-clipped jackets hide the $27.99 point and drop value. Ex-library copies (stamps, pockets, spine labels) and remainder-marked copies (spray/marker on bottom text-block edge) are not collectible firsts. Do not confuse the 2011 trade paperback (which adds "Under the Weather") or the UK Hodder & Stoughton edition with the US Scribner true first. The Cemetery Dance editions are genuine but are NOT the bibliographic first edition — sellers sometimes imply otherwise.

Print run & scarcity

Two distinct publishers / two questions:\n\n1) SCRIBNER MASS-MARKET TRADE HARDCOVER (the main US 1st edition, ISBN 9781439192566, pub Nov 9 2010, $27.95): No reliable first-printing quantity is published. Wikipedia, the Publishers Weekly review page, the King-collector/identification sources, and booksellers (johnatkinsonbooks, biblio, AbeBooks) all give publisher/date/number-line ID info but state NO copy count. A '1.2 million copies' figure surfaced ONLY inside auto-generated search-engine answer summaries with no quoted primary source behind it — I treat that as unverified/likely fabricated and did NOT adopt it. King titles of this era did have large announced first printings, but no trustworthy figure for THIS title was found. First-printing trade copies are identified by the full number line ending in '1' on the copyright page (standard Scribner practice), not by a published quota.\n\n2) CEMETERY DANCE LIMITED 1st EDITIONS (separate small-press deluxe printing, the only firmly documented quantities): per Cemetery Dance's own product page — Slipcased Gift Edition 1,750 copies; Signed & Numbered (leather-bound) 750 copies; Signed & Lettered (traycased, signed by King + all artists) 52 copies. The entire limited edition sold out before publication.\n\nNo source disagreement on the Cemetery Dance counts (all sources converge on 1,750 / 750 / 52). The only 'disagreement' is the spurious 1.2M trade figure that appears solely in AI summaries; reliability of that figure: none.

First-state points & errata

No widely-documented errata or distinct first-state-vs-later-state textual point is reported for this title. Identification rests on the "First Edition" statement + full number line ending in 1, plus the unclipped $27.99 jacket. UNVERIFIED whether any minor typo state exists; none is cataloged by the main collector references.

Limited & signed editions

Cemetery Dance Publications limited set (issued after the trade): (1) Slipcased Oversized Gift Edition — 1,750 copies, $75, two-color printing with two-color hot-foil stamping and embossed endpapers; (2) Traycased Signed Limited Edition — 750 copies, $350, leather-bound, signed by Stephen King, satin ribbon marker, embossed endpapers; (3) Signed Lettered Edition — 52 copies, $1,500, bound in two fine materials, gilded edges, satin ribbon, imported endpapers, custom deluxe traycase, signed by King and all artists. Illustrated by Tomislav Tikulin (covers), Glenn Chadbourne ("1922"), Jill Bauman ("Big Driver"), Alan M. Clark ("Fair Extension"), and Vincent Chong ("A Good Marriage"). The Lettered sold out in ~2 hours; the Signed Limited in ~12 hours.

Market value estimate

~$25–$60

Assumes a genuine first edition / first printing in near-fine to fine condition (clean copy, unclipped jacket). Lesser condition is worth less.

No confirmed sale found, so this is rated at no less than its original jacket price — a true first/first should hold at least retail in near-fine/fine condition. Soft estimate from dealer listings (treat as approximate): $25–60 unsigned true first (fine/fine, unclipped); $700–1,100 signed-by-King true first (title page, authenticated)

Book-club edition (the trap): $5–15. Book-club / ex-library / reading copies (clipped jacket, library stamps, bumped) trade at a few dollars. There is no separately printed prestige BCE that commands a premium for this title — the "trap" copies are simply the abused trade printing dumped cheap or, conversely, mislisted at inflated prices. — a fraction of a true first; never pay first-edition money for one.

Condition barely moves the needle on the UNSIGNED copy because supply is enormous (2010 mega-print run) — even a flawless fine/fine tops out around $40–60 at a dealer. The value lever is the SIGNATURE: a King-signed true first (title page, ideally JSA/PSA authenticated, unpersonalized) jumps to $700–1,100, roughly 20x the unsigned copy. The single biggest thing that separates a real, valuable copy from the mislisted ones for THIS title is NOT a Scribner trade point (those are trivially common) — it is recognizing which book you actually hold: the everyday Scribner trade first (full number line ending in 1, $27.99 jacket price, Scribner imprint) is worth tens of dollars, while the OVERSIZED Cemetery Dance signed/numbered or lettered limited (leather/traycase, illustrated, signed by King + artists) is the four-figure book. Sellers routinely cross-list the two and price a common $30 trade copy at $300+ asking. Ignore AbeBooks/eBay ASKING prices on the trade copy — they are wildly inflated relative to what these actually sell for.

Value sources:

Sources

confidence: High on the two load-bearing points: number line "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2" and jacket price $27.99 (both confirmed by stephenkingcollector.com and corroborated by multiple dealer first-printing listings), plus cover photographer Jeff Bark (Wikipedia) and the Cemetery Dance limited specs (publisher's own page). Medium on board/spine colors (quarter black cloth / blue boards / red spine stamping) — drawn from dealer listing summaries rather than a single directly-fetched authoritative binding page. Topstain/endpapers marked UNVERIFIED.← Back to all titles