The terms revised edition and nth edition, revised are sometimes used by publishers when the book has been editorially revised or updated but for some reason the author or publisher does not want to call it the n+1th edition (where n = previous edition number).
Conversely, they may decide to call a version that is really not very different a "new edition" (n+1th).
The qualitative difference, then, between a "revised edition" and a "new edition" is subjective. This is analogous to the way that software publishers may call one update "version 3.7" but call the next update "version 4" instead of "version 3.8". The difference is their subjective sense of the significance of the change—that is, whether the differences constitute something very different or merely slightly different. Sometimes the distinction has more to do with marketing than with sound reasoning (that is, encouraging buyers to think that something slightly different is very different).
Read more about this topic: Edition (book)
Famous quotes containing the words revised and/or edition:
“Coming to Rome, much labour and little profit! The King whom you seek here, unless you bring Him with you you will not find Him.”
—Anonymous 9th century, Irish. “Epigram,” no. 121, A Celtic Miscellany (1951, revised 1971)
“Books have their destinies like men. And their fates, as made by generations of readers, are very different from the destinies foreseen for them by their authors. Gulliver’s Travels, with a minimum of expurgation, has become a children’s book; a new illustrated edition is produced every Christmas. That’s what comes of saying profound things about humanity in terms of a fairy story.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)