why do books always have a page with a bunch of numbers on it
it has the copyright info and stuff but also there's always the line "10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1"
@Felthry They actually have quite a specific meaning, and it's not always that exact sequence. It's meant to indicate which printing run the book is from.
When a new run is being set up, rather than completely redoing one page, they can remove one of the numbers from that page. That's much easier on a printing plate than additions or alterations are, because you can just sand the number off the plate.
Thus, the lowest number present indicates that this book is from the nth printing run of that edition.
@Felthry The practice is already disappearing. It's almost never done any more by British publishing houses, for example.