Where to find the "spiffy new printings" of Knuth's Computers & Typesetting books?

See update at end.

This is rather more complicated than it appears.

The new printings involve the hardcover editions of the Computers & Typesetting volumes. The situation as of October 2012 was described in my TUGboat column, and I won't go into all the details here.

These are new printings, not new editions, so most booksellers don't distinguish, and it's generally not clear whether what is being sold is the new printing or an old one. To quote from my column,

[...] if you order through the member link on the TUG bookstore page, and specify that you want only the new printing but receive the wrong printing in error, a message to the publisher's customer service should result in a prompt correction.

It's likely that the new printings are the ones in common circulation now, but it never hurts to be careful. Besides, TUG does get a small commission on books sold through this offer, and that goes to help support CTAN and other TeX-related endeavours.

update (as of 20 January 2021)

As long as someone has been nice enough to give this an upvote, I may as well provide the latest information.

2021 is a review year (all reports had to be turned in by 31 December 2020, and a lot of people worked very hard to find something that hadn't already been reported). Don Knuth has reviewed them, and accepted some of them (I don't know the details), so there will be updates to books. Discussions are going on with the publisher, and paper copies will be produced. (The details of that aren't final yet either.)

At the moment, the publisher's website has the C&T books shown as not currently available, at best back ordered. When more information is available, it will be posted on the TUG website, and it is expected that some special consideration will be made for TUG members, at least continuation of the current discount. Please stay tuned.

Yes, they were published in 2012. WorldCat (www.worldcat.org) shows that only one library in the United States and only a few libraries in Germany own the set:

• Northeastern State University (Oklahoma)
• Universitätsbibliothek Regensburg (Germany)
• Universitätsbibliothek Bayreuth (Germany)

(One might have thought Stanford would buy a copy, at least... It might just not be in the WorldCat database yet.)

Six years later (now in 2021), I can provide some new information.

“Newer” answer (applicable after January 21, 2021)

These “Spiffy New Printings” are now in the process of being replaced with the “Jubilee Edition”. In particular, The TeXbook (Volume A, 23rd printing) is currently in press (which means my recently received 22nd printing has just missed the 2020/2021 tuneup, sighhhhhh).

The publisher should have waited for the tuneup: The TeXbook was out of stock since November 2020, and the publisher put the 22nd printing in press before the newest corrections were incorporated (Dec 2020 or Jan 2021). The 22nd printing feels like a rushed product to fulfill so many backorders. I should have made my order a bit later, oh well…

“Older” answer (applicable between November 2020 and January 21, 2021)

I ordered all five volumes of Computers & Typesetting back in November 2020 using @barbarabeeton’s recommendation (i.e., ordering from InformIT.com with discount code available at TUG books page). At that time, Volumes A (The TeXbook) and C (The METAFONTbook) were out of stock so they were put on backorders. Last week I received Volume A, which was apparently printed in January 2021 (or late December 2020)!

The four volumes I received so far were still labeled as the “2000 Millennium Edition”, but each one should be the newest printing (i.e., the “spiffy new printing”) available as of today (Jan 17, 2021):

• Volume A (The TeXbook): 22nd printing, Janurary 2021;
• Volume B: 10th printing, November 2017;
• Volume C (The METAFONTbook): unknown, yet;
• Volume D: 8th printing, November 2017;
• Volume E: 8th printing, November 2017;