r/wiedzmin • u/pothkan SPQN • Feb 10 '20

Books Guide to editions of the Witcher books

This is a little project I compiled in last days, being an expansion on my previous covers of the Last Wish post. I wanted to list, and sort, all editions of books in the Witcher series, published in various languages (30 + Polish). Result of that ended in shape of a PDF file (6 MB) - which you can now browse and download!

Here is a sneak peek, if you can't right now (e.g. mobile), but want to see what is inside.

Take in mind, that it's still a WIP (supposed to by updated in future, at least once a year - as we can expect more editions after Netflix boosted series' popularity). So if you have anything to add or correct - please do! E.g. I miss many covers' artist names.

Besides that, here are some specific questions:

  • Which editions are sold in English-speaking countries except UK & USA?. I suppose American editions are sold in Canada, but what about e.g. Australia, South Africa, Singapore, New Zealand?

  • Are there any pirated editions, other than Iranian ones?

  • How is a witcher called in Dutch, Greek, Portuguese (European), Romanian, Swedish and Turkish translations?

  • Last but not least, which edition(s) do you own? :) And what do you think about it, both quality-wise, and translation itself?

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u/CrivilNite Civril Feb 10 '20 edited Feb 10 '20

First of all awesome job, i tried something similar (way way way less worked out) some years ago and failed miserably.

There're some mistakes in the spanish one. MX1 should be spanish 5 (tho spanish 4 it's a standalone special edition, should be 3d so MX1 should be spanish 4) cause Artifex is the print-on-demand seal of Alamut/Bibliopolis, it's the same edition just another branch.

There was too another standalone special edition of The Last Wish with TW2 inspired cover, which should be 3c, printed by Alamut too:

https://www.amazon.es/ULTIMO-DESEO-THE-WITCHER-2/dp/8498890659

There's another spanish illustrated editon incoming, can update with it if you want when it's released.

​

P.D: I own first editions of the ES 1 + ES3 Season of Storms, they dind't release it in the ES 1 format :(

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u/pothkan SPQN Feb 10 '20 edited Feb 10 '20

cause Artifex is the print-on-demand seal of Alamut/Bibliopolis, it's the same edition just another branch.

So it was sold in Spain? I thought it was an edition for Mexican market only.

P.D: I own first editions of the ES 1 + ES3 Season of Storms, they dind't release it in the ES 1 format :(

Heh, thankfully I own PL3 edition. When I first read books, it was PL1, but only borrowed. And when I decided to buy one of my own, all PL1 were already overpriced, and I hated PL2 covers... thankfully when Season came out, they decided to run new edition with similar covers... although quality is not the best (I mean physical).

TBH Polish editions suck overall, I guess it's an exchange for being able to read original...

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u/CrivilNite Civril Feb 10 '20 edited Feb 10 '20

Afaik (and i know a bit, managing an spanish witcher related forum since 2013) there're not out of Spain spanish editions, all south/central american ones are from Bibliopolis/Alamut/Artifex, which are seals of the same spaniard editorial.

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u/pothkan SPQN Feb 10 '20

So in general, there's no market division in Spanish editions at all? Just want to be clear, there is BR/PT, TW/CN and UK/US division (although first two include some language difference), I supposed it's possible for Spanish too :)

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u/CrivilNite Civril Feb 10 '20

There're but not in this case, Alamut is a kinda small Spanish editorial (it survived mostly cause Sapkowski success along the years) with 3 seals, but all three are for spanish market with american books been just importations.

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u/pothkan SPQN Feb 10 '20

(it survived mostly cause Sapkowski success along the years)

SuperNOWA pretty much publishes nothing else, they hit a jackpot with him. And they don't even have much work to do (Sapkowski is known to be a perfectionist, not much is needed to be corrected / adjusted). Heck, in one of boxed sets they even didn't change typesetting (it was a different font for 1-7 and SoS).

It would be probably better with bigger publisher, like German or Russian one.