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

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams: Stories Common

2015 · Scribner (an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.), New York
First-edition cover of The Bazaar of Bad Dreams: Stories
First-edition jacket (first edition (verified vs jacket)) · source

What it’s about

Stephen King gathers twenty short stories and poems spanning the genres he commands best — horror, suspense, crime, and quiet unease — into a single collection. A car with murderous appetites, a man who reads the obituaries of people not yet dead, an alien-tech Kindle that delivers fiction from parallel worlds, and a small-town stand of poisonous childhood all wait inside. King introduces each piece with a candid note on where it came from, turning the book into part anthology, part guided tour of his imagination.

Significance King's sixth major story collection, gathering work from across his career — including "Mile 81," "Ur," and the Edgar Award-winning crime tale "The Dune" — with his signature personal author's notes framing each story.

Is this the true first?Yes. The Scribner trade hardcover (ISBN 978-1-5011-1167-9) is the true US first edition, first printing. This is a 20-story collection published 2015-11-03. No small-press limited precedes the trade for this title (unlike, e.g., Cycle of the Werewolf or Eyes of the Dragon). It is NOT a paperback original.
The Scribner trade hardcover is the true first edition. The official stephenking.com "Identifying first editions" guide (compiled by Bev Vincent) lists no preceding limited/small-press edition for this title; bracketed limited-edition publishers are noted in that guide for other titles but NOT for Bazaar of Bad Dreams. The UK first (Hodder & Stoughton, 2015) is a separate, simultaneous edition and is NOT the true first for an American author — collect the US Scribner printing.

First-printing points at a glance

First-printing statementCopyright page must state BOTH: "First Scribner hardcover edition November 2015" AND carry the number line. Per the official stephenking.com guide entry: "First Scribner hardcover edition: November 2015 on CP" plus "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2" on CP. Both must be present for a true first printing. (Watch for snippet errors citing "June 2015" — that is the date for Finders Keepers, a different 2015 King/Scribner title; Bazaar is November 2015.)
Number lineFirst printing shows the full row "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2". The load-bearing point is the presence of the numeral "1": a second printing removes the 1 (lowest number becomes "2"). Any line missing the 1 is a later printing, not a first.
Gutter / printer codeN/A (Scribner number-line title, no Doubleday gutter/printer code)
First printing — copiesNot publicly disclosed
First jacket priceUS $30.00 / Canada $36.99 (Upper front dust-jacket flap (top corner). The official stephenking.com guide lists DJ price $30.00; dealer listings confirm "$30.00 / Canada $36.99" printed on the front flap. A price-clipped jacket (corner cut off) hides this and lowers value. Book-club jackets carry NO inside-flap price.)
Board (panel) colorBlack boards (paper/cloth over boards). Quarter-bound two-tone construction.
Spine / center bindingBlack spine cloth (quarter-cloth) with bright silver titling/lettering on the spine.
Binding styleQuarter-bound (two-tone): black quarter cloth spine over black boards, sewn binding. Trim size 6¼ x 9½ x 1.7" per the official guide; 495 pages.
Topstain / endpapersNo notable colored topstain reported (plain/white top edge typical of the Scribner era). Endpapers UNVERIFIED in consulted sources (commonly plain). Not a primary identification point for this title.

Dust jacket

First-state Scribner jacket features stylized dark/typographic cover art consistent with King's mid-2010s Scribner collections; front shows title and author with a moody, low-key design; rear carries review/blurb text. Author photo on rear panel/flap typical of the era. Specific imagery/colorway not exhaustively documented in consulted dealer copy beyond the black-and-silver binding palette. UNVERIFIED on precise front/back art specifics.

Art / design: UNVERIFIED. Jacket design credit not confirmed in the consulted collector references for the Scribner first. (Will Staehle is credited on other King/Scribner jackets such as The Outsider, but his involvement with Bazaar is NOT confirmed — do not assume.) Designer/photographer should be read off the actual jacket's rear flap credit line.

reference photohttps://www.rarebookcellar.com/pages/books/105474/stephen-king/the-bazaar-of-bad-dreams-storiesreference photohttps://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/bazaar-bad-dreams-stories/author/stephen-king/first-edition/
Book-club edition & fakes — how to spot a wrong copyBook-club (BOMC/SFBC) copies of this title are identified by: (1) NO price on the inside front jacket flap — the single most reliable tell per the official guide ("Book Club edition dust jackets...do not have a price marked inside the front cover"); (2) "Book Club Edition" sometimes printed on the lower front jacket flap; (3) a small blind-stamp (indented circle/square/dot, usually lower-right of the REAR board); (4) smaller trim size, thinner/cheaper paper, lighter weight, often glued rather than sewn. A genuine first weighs ~1 lb 14 oz and measures 6¼ x 9½ x 1.7". This is a Scribner number-line title, NOT a Doubleday gutter-code title, so the "missing gutter code" tell does not apply — rely on the missing flap price + blind stamp.

Also watch for: (1) Married jackets — a book-club jacket placed on a trade first (or vice versa); always verify the inside-flap $30.00/$36.99 price AND the dual copyright point together. (2) Price-clipped jackets hide the price tell — discount accordingly. (3) Later-printing trade jackets can carry a different price; cross-check the number line, not just the jacket. (4) Ex-library copies (stamps/pockets/labels) and remainder marks (spray/marker to the bottom text-block edge) — both depress value. (5) Restored/married copies and facsimile jackets — confirm jacket is original to the era. (6) Signed copies — verify authenticity/provenance; auto-pen and forged signatures circulate. (7) Beware listings that cite "First Scribner hardcover edition June 2015" — that is wrong (June 2015 = Finders Keepers); the Bazaar first states November 2015.

Print run & scarcity

Trade hardcover, Scribner US, first edition/first printing November 3, 2015 (ISBN 978-1-5011-1167-9), 495 pp. First-printing-state points are full number line ending in 1 and "First Scribner hardcover edition November 2015" on copyright page. No announced or documented first-printing quantity exists: stephenkingcollector.com (the standard collector reference) explicitly lists it as "A first edition of ??? copies" (i.e., unknown). Wikipedia gives publication details but NO print-run figure. A web-search summary surfaced "1,000,000 copies," but that figure is unsourced and traces to AI-generated content (Grokipedia), not a publisher announcement or bibliographic record — treated as unreliable and NOT reported as fact. This is a standard mass-market trade first printing (not a Donald M. Grant signed/numbered/lettered limited, not a paperback original, not a BOMC original), so there are no separate limited-edition counts to report.

First-state points & errata

No widely catalogued errata/typo state change separating first-state from later-state first printings is documented for this title in the consulted collector references. The first printing is identified solely by the dual point (statement + number line containing 1). UNVERIFIED whether any minor text state exists; none reported by the official guide or trade dealers.

Limited & signed editions

UNVERIFIED / none documented in the consulted core references. No Scribner or major small-press (Cemetery Dance / Donald M. Grant / Subterranean / PS Publishing) slipcased signed-limited of The Bazaar of Bad Dreams is confirmed in the sources reviewed here. Signed first-printing trade copies (King's signature in the standard hardcover) exist and trade at a premium, but those are signed firsts, not a separate numbered limited. Treat any "signed/numbered traycased limited" claim as needing direct publisher confirmation.

Market value confirmed sales

$25–60 (true first, fine/fine, unclipped, UNSIGNED); signed authenticated first ~$1,200–2,200

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

Confirmed sales: Unsigned true firsts (fine/fine) routinely close ~$25–50 on eBay sold/completed (2023–2025), e.g. multiple HC/DJ first-printing copies in the $30–45 band. Signed first printing w/ JSA authentication offered/sold in the ~$1,500–2,700 asking range on eBay (2024–2025), with realized authenticated signed sales clustering nearer ~$1,200–1,800. No Heritage/PBA auction record located for this title specifically — it is too recent and common to reach those rooms unsigned; do not treat any single dealer asking price as a sold comp.

Book-club edition (the trap): No true BOMC/BCE hardcover was issued for this 2015 title in the U.S. (King BCEs largely predate this era), so the classic "book-club trap" is minimal here — but later printings, the UK Hodder/Scribner edition, the tall rack/mass-market paperback, the large-print PB, and ex-library copies are all routinely mislisted as "first edition." Those are effectively $3–15 reading copies. — a fraction of a true first; never pay first-edition money for one.

Condition sensitivity is modest in absolute dollars but high in ratio: an unsigned first is a sub-$60 book even fine/fine, and a price-clipped jacket, bumped corners, remainder mark, or ex-library stamp knocks it to ~$10–20. Signing is the ONLY thing that pushes this into real money — and because there was no promotional signing tour, genuine signed firsts are scarcer than the giant print run implies; insist on JSA/Beckett/PSA or reputable-dealer provenance (~10–40x premium over unsigned). THE #1 POINT THAT SEPARATES A REAL FIRST FROM THE MISLISTED COPIES: this is a SCRIBNER book, so ignore any "Doubleday gutter code" talk — the true first-printing test is the FULL NUMBER LINE ENDING IN 1 on the copyright page TOGETHER WITH the printed statement "First Scribner hardcover edition November 2015" and a $30.00 unclipped US jacket. A copy missing the "1", showing a later number line, lacking that Scribner statement, or with a clipped/foreign-price ($-different) jacket is a later printing or non-US edition being passed off as a first.

Value sources:

Sources

Verification notes: Cross-check passed on TWO+ sources for both the price ($30.00 / Canada $36.99 — official guide + AbeBooks dealer copy) and the copyright point/number line ("First Scribner hardcover edition November 2015" + "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2" — official stephenking.com guide PDF + dealer listings). Resolved the June/November ambiguity using the primary-source PDF table, which lists Bazaar at November 2015 and Finders Keepers (the source of the "June" confusion) at June 2015. Scribner-era rule (presence of numeral 1 = first; 1 removed = later printing) confirmed in the guide's general preamble.

confidence: High on the core identification points (copyright statement, number line "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2", $30.00/$36.99 price, black quarter-cloth/silver-spine binding, November 2015) — cross-confirmed by the official stephenking.com Bev Vincent guide AND multiple trade dealers (Rare Book Cellar, AbeBooks). Medium/low on jacket-artist credit, endpaper/topstain specifics, and the existence of any signed-limited (marked UNVERIFIED rather than guessed).← Back to all titles