What are the publisher's notes found usually at the beginning of a book?

Question

Usually, on Page 2 or 4 of a book, you get details of the books publishing history, like the name and address of the publisher, date of issue, etc.
One often finds a row of even- and odd numbers, like 8 6 4 2 0 1 3 5 7 9. What do these numbers mean?

Answer 1

Those are to keep track of the printing history. You can have a first edition but a seventh printing-- the edition means the book as a whole, so if you make a change then it becomes a different edition (second, revised, whatever) but if you just run out of copies and more of the same book without changes, it becomes a first edition, second printing.

Different publishers do this different ways: some just use 1 2 3 4 etc. and remove a number when a reprint is done, but others do the line as you have it and remove numbers that way.