Something About Being Purple-in-the-Face with Olmstead Press

A page from our bibliofiles.

I've been confused about a particular edition of The Face in the Frost for years.

Olmstead Press published a bare-bones edition of Face back in 2000. The Olmstead hardcover edition has a black dust jacket with a generic-looking wizard sitting in a room. At some point later in the decade, an Olmstead edition with a purple cover began to appear on the market. Its cover displays what looks like a full moon. In time, searches for the black Olmstead edition always returned the purple cover, and I long assumed it was a later edition.

Case in point, the ISBN for the black edition, 158754105X, soon was associated on sites with the purple cover.

I remembered years ago Bellairsia used to include the ISBNs on the site alongside cover images. I reviewed the 2008-era version of the site and found the purple cover likely had a different ISBN:

• isbnsearch.org/isbn/1585860352
• abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=1585860352&sts=t 

Confusing matters is the ISBN search shows the image of an Ace paperback we know to be from the late-1970s or early-1980s. I know though ownership the edition with the black dust jacket is a hardcover. Does that make the purple cover a paperback? Olmstead was on the verge of bankruptcy so producing a paperback seems odd. If so, they must not have printed many, making it all the rarer and why there are high prices for some silly version of the book. At some point, the editions became interchangeable, and we see the mess we have today before us. Even Amazon has it wrong.

I'm curious if anyone actually owns this 20-year-old purple edition and can shed any light on it.