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

Mr. Mercedes Common

2014 · Scribner (Simon & Schuster), New York

First-edition cover of Mr. Mercedes — First-edition jacket (US first edition hardcover, Scribner, June 3, 2014 (Bill Hodges trilogy #1)) · source

What it’s about

A retired, depressive police detective is haunted by the one case he never closed: a stolen Mercedes that plowed into a crowd of job-seekers at a pre-dawn unemployment fair, killing eight and wounding many more, its driver never caught. When the killer reaches out with a taunting letter, he draws the lonely ex-cop into a private, escalating duel of wits, even as the perpetrator quietly plots something far larger. A propulsive cat-and-mouse thriller told from both the hunter's and the killer's perspectives.

Significance Solo Stephen King; his first hardboiled detective novel and the opener of the Bill Hodges Trilogy (followed by Finders Keepers and End of Watch). It won the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Novel and was adapted into the Audience Network TV series Mr. Mercedes (2017-2019).

Is this the true first?Yes. The US Scribner trade hardcover (June 3, 2014, ISBN 9781476754451, 437pp) is the true first edition, first printing. No small-press or limited edition precedes it, and there is no paperback original. This is a standard modern Scribner-era trade first.
The Scribner trade hardcover is the true first. Unlike the early Doubleday-era titles, no Donald M. Grant / Philtrum / Land of Enchantment small-press limited precedes the trade. A later Glenn Chadbourne "New Cover Series No. 5" collectible is NOT the true first. UNVERIFIED whether a contemporaneous signed/limited slipcased edition was issued at publication; if one exists it postdates and does not displace the Scribner trade first.

I own a copy of this title

My notes — condition, state, price intact, is it a book-club copy?

First-printing points at a glance

First-printing statementCopyright page states "First Scribner hardcover edition June 2014". Per the Scribner-era convention (1998+), a TRUE first requires BOTH this edition statement AND the full number line ending in 1 — both must be present together.

Number lineFirst printing shows the full Scribner number line "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2" (lowest digit 1 present). Any line missing the 1 (e.g. beginning "2 4 6 8 10..." or "3 5 7 9...") is a later printing, NOT a first. Dealers consistently cite "full print number line" with the "1" present; confidence high on "contains 1," medium on the precise interior ordering.

Gutter / printer codeN/A — modern Scribner; no Doubleday/printer gutter code. Identification is by stated edition + number line.

First printing — copies~1,250,000 copies (first trade printing, US Scribner hardcover) accepted figure

First jacket price$30.00 (US). Canadian price typically also printed (approx. $34.00 CAN). (Upper front dust-jacket flap (top right corner of the front flap). A price-clipped flap hides this and lowers value.)

Board (panel) colorBlack paper-over-boards.

Spine / center bindingRed spine (red cloth/paper) — quarter-bound, two-tone: red spine panel over black boards. Spine/title lettering metallic.

Binding styleQuarter-bound (two-tone): red cloth/paper spine over black paper-covered boards; sewn binding (trade first). Book-club copies are typically glued and use cheaper paper.

Topstain / endpapersUNVERIFIED topstain (no plain-stain noted on the US Scribner trade; likely none/white). Endpapers: plain on the US trade. (The blue-sky / patterned-endpaper and metallic-blue-spine description that appears in some listings is the UK Hodder & Stoughton edition, not the US Scribner first — do not conflate.)

Dust jacket

Front: stylized graphic design centered on the novel's hook — a Mercedes used as a weapon ramming a crowd at a job fair. Title "MR. MERCEDES" prominent with "STEPHEN KING" byline; "A NOVEL," Bill Hodges Trilogy Book 1. Rear: blurbs/synopsis. The US trade jacket carries the $30.00 price on the front flap. Specific palette and photographic-vs-illustrated treatment: UNVERIFIED in full.

Art / design: UNVERIFIED specific credit. The US Scribner first jacket is a graphic/design treatment (publisher in-house design) rather than a credited painted illustration. Glenn Chadbourne art is associated ONLY with a later commemorative "New Cover Series No. 5" cover (cover-only, signed, ltd 500) and is NOT the original first-edition jacket. No photographer/illustrator credit confirmed for the trade jacket.

https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Mr-Mercedes-Stephen-King-Scribner/30932920424/bd

https://www.rarebookcellar.com/pages/books/186255/stephen-king/mr-mercedes

Book-club edition & fakes — how to spot a wrong copyBook Club Edition (BCE/BOMC) of this exact title: (1) NO price on the front jacket flap (the single fastest tell — the true first prints $30.00); (2) jacket otherwise "identical size / design to the true 1st printing" per dealers, so judge by the flap, not the art; (3) small blind-stamp (indented circle/dot/square) on the lower-right of the REAR board; (4) often "Book Club Edition" printed on the lower front flap; (5) thinner/lighter/cheaper paper, glued rather than sewn, sometimes slightly smaller trim; (6) the copyright page LACKS the Scribner number line / first-edition statement.

Also watch for: (1) Married jackets — a clipped or BCE jacket swapped onto a trade first, or vice versa; verify the $30.00 price is present AND the copyright page shows the first-edition statement + number line. (2) UK/US conflation — UK Hodder first has black boards/metallic-blue spine + the "HARTFIED" jacket typo; do NOT use UK points to grade a US copy. (3) Price-clipped jackets hide the price and reduce value. (4) Later printings passed as firsts — confirm the number line still contains the 1. (5) Ex-library copies (stamps, pockets) and remainder marks (spray/marker to bottom edge) materially reduce value. (6) BCE sold as trade first — check rear-board blind-stamp and the missing flap price.

Print run & scarcity

Format: standard US trade hardcover, Scribner (Simon & Schuster imprint), pub. June 3, 2014, $30, ISBN 9781476754451. True-first ID point: complete number line ending in '1' on the copyright page; unclipped $30 dust jacket. HEADLINE: ~1,250,000-copy first printing — this is a publisher CATALOG/announced first-printing figure (per the Simon & Schuster digital catalog as quoted on the stephenkingcollector.com forum), characteristic of a mega-selling Scribner King title, NOT a counted/audited bindery run. SOURCE DISAGREEMENT / RELIABILITY FLAG: the same authority (stephenkingcollector.com) is internally split — the catalog-sourced forum thread gives 1,250,000, but the site's dedicated Mr. Mercedes bibliography page lists 'A first edition of ??? copies' (i.e., uncommitted). The same site also shows catalog-vs-bibliography drift on a sibling title (Doctor Sleep: 1,500,000 in the catalog/forum vs 1,100,000 on the per-title page), so treat any exact catalog number as approximate. LIMITED EDITIONS: no signed/numbered/lettered US small-press limited was issued for Mr. Mercedes (unlike the Donald M. Grant Dark Tower volumes); signed trade copies are scarce because there was no formal signing tour. A UK WHSmith 'Collector's Edition' variant exists (purple titles/umbrella) but no separate published quantity. No Publishers Weekly or Wikipedia print-run figure was found; the 1,250,000 catalog figure is the only quantity in circulation. The reference's commonly-cited ~30,000 Carrie figure was NOT reused — verified this title independently.

First-state points & errata

No widely documented US first-state textual erratum separating states of the Scribner first printing. CAUTION: the well-known "Brady HARTFIED" (should read "HARTSFIELD") back-of-jacket typo is a HODDER & STOUGHTON UK first-edition point, NOT a US Scribner point — do not use it to authenticate a US copy. US authentication rests on the "First Scribner hardcover edition June 2014" statement + full number line containing 1.

Limited & signed editions

UNVERIFIED. No confirmed publisher-issued signed/numbered traycased limited at original 2014 publication located in sources. A later "Stephen King New Cover Series No. 5 — Mr. Mercedes" (Glenn Chadbourne wraparound cover art, artist-signed, limited to 500, cover-only collectible) exists but is a separate collectible, not a signed limited of the book.

Market value confirmed sales

$30–90 (true first, fine/fine, unsigned, $30.00 jacket price intact/unclipped); signed-by-King jumps to ~$700–1,300

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

Confirmed sales: ~$30 dealer sale, fine/fine unsigned first (AbeBooks dealer-confirmed, recent 2024–25). Near-fine/near-fine unsigned first sold ~$88 (AbeBooks, 2025). Signed first edition, fine/fine, "very scarce when signed" — SOLD/out-of-stock at First & Fine (firstandfine.com, dealer record). Unsigned trade firsts routinely close $9–59 on eBay SOLD (2024–25) — spread driven by condition/jacket, not edition.

Book-club edition (the trap): $5–15. The Scribner / Book-of-the-Month club edition is the classic trap: it can carry the SAME number line and "First Scribner hardcover edition June 2014" statement (club reproduced the copyright page), so the line alone proves nothing. BCEs are worth a few dollars at most. — a fraction of a true first; never pay first-edition money for one.

THE single biggest separator for THIS title: the DUST JACKET PRICE. The true Scribner trade first has $30.00 printed on the front jacket flap, unclipped. A book-club edition has NO price on the flap (often physically slightly smaller, with a blind-stamp/dot on the rear board) — yet frequently shows the identical full number line and "June 2014" statement, which is why the number line is a red herring for Mr. Mercedes. Confirm $30.00 unclipped flap price + no BCE blind-stamp on rear board = real first. A price-clipped jacket guts value and makes BCE-vs-trade ambiguous. Condition sensitivity is high relative to the low base: a genuine fine/fine unclipped copy sits near the top of the $30–90 band; bumped/reading copies or ex-library land at the bottom or below. The ONLY meaningful premium is a verified King signature — he did no signing tour for Mr. Mercedes, so authentic signed firsts are genuinely scarce and have sold/asked $700–1,300+ (verify provenance/COA from a reputable dealer; eBay "signed + COA" at $1,299–1,349 are asking prices where forgeries cluster). The 2015 Edgar Award (Best Novel) adds interest but does not move the unsigned trade first much given the print run.

Value sources:

Sources

Verification notes: Cross-checked across 2+ sources: (a) copyright statement "First Scribner hardcover edition June 2014" — AbeBooks Dusty Spine listing + multiple AbeBooks first-edition listings; (b) $30.00 price-on-flap inferred-confirmed by the BCE tell (Bookshop Apocalypse BCE listing explicitly notes "no price on jacket" vs the true first), consistent with standard 2014 Scribner trade pricing; (c) quarter-bound red spine / black boards — AbeBooks dealer descriptions ("quarter red paper over black paper boards"). FLAGGED conflation risk: the "HARTFIED" jacket typo and metallic-blue-spine/blue-sky-endpaper descriptions belong to the UK Hodder edition and were explicitly separated out. UNVERIFIED fields (jacket artist/designer credit, exact number-line digit order, topstain) left as UNVERIFIED rather than guessed.

confidence: Medium-high. HIGH on: it is the true first (no small-press precedent), publisher/year, the "First Scribner hardcover edition June 2014" statement, $30.00 front-flap price, quarter-bound red-spine/black-boards US binding, and BCE no-price tell (each cross-confirmed by 2+ dealer sources). MEDIUM/LOWER on: exact interior order of the number line digits, jacket designer/artist credit, and topstain/endpaper specifics (UNVERIFIED for the US trade; some listings describe the UK edition instead). No single authoritative points-guide page was directly retrievable, so a few fields rest on dealer-listing consensus rather than a canonical bibliography.← Back to all titles