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What can I say? The most commercialized horror author of all time. No way the best horror writer of all time. No way the best story teller of all time. No way the all time best at anything horror. In no way comes close to the best horror writers in the genre- and he will admit to this. After all I just said, he is "The King of Horror". No one person has done more for the genre then he has.
As a struggling writer and desperate for money, he signs a 5 book deal, with a publisher's option for a 6th, with Doubleday for upfront money and very limited rights to his work.
He came on the scene at the right time when horror was bland and pretty much relegated to TV movies for an adult audience. Carrie was different. It was written for a whole new, young audience. Then the movie Carrie is released- it does pretty good in theaters but doesn't help book sales.
Due to the slow Carrie book sales, Doubleday, not with any idea of the future market they are creating, and anticipaiting a high demand for King's next book, begin to pre-print and start sending out Salem's Lot with a $8.95 price.

But with the low demand for Carrie, Doubleday, seeing the $8.95 price as being to high, stop everything and begin clipping the $8.95 price off the DJ and rerun the Dust Jackets with a $7.95 price- still not catching the "Father Cody" misprint.

Finally, after reducing the print run to 20,000, down 10,000 for Carrie, they sent out the rest of the books with the corrected Dust Jacket- thus creating the Salem's Lot Three State DJ's.

No matter which state of Salem's Lot it may be, without being stated as "First Edition" on the copyright page and the Q37 gutter code found on the last page, it IS NOT a first edition.