In the field of book publishing, a collection, or more precisely editorial collection is a set of books published by the same publisher, usually written by various authors, grouped under the same title, each book with a particular title. The collective title is the title of the collection, it must be mentioned on each book. The books that make up an editorial collection can be published in a specific order or not. When each volume in the collection has a serial number, it is called a numbered collection. A collection generally using distinctive, common formats and features. The title of a collection can be accompanied by the term “series” or its equivalents in other languages, such as in the English-speaking world, for example, the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Découvertes Gallimard and Que sais-je? are all termed book series instead of collections.
Brief history
In France, the concept “collection” invented by Louis Hachette, a 19th-century publisher, under the name bibliothèque, which means “library”. In 19th and early 20th-century Spain, literary collections such as ', ', ' and ' were produced. Another collection created in 1851, in Madrid, the , notably for its encyclopaedialike contents. It contains not only the literary works, but also reference work, Comte de Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle, Cesare Cantù’s Storia Universale, Juan de Mariana’s Historia general de España… and it even contains the whole Bible in Spanish. In Italy, the first editorial collection is Collana historica, which included the vulgarised works of twelve Greek historians, edited by the 16th-century humanistTommaso Porcacchi and printed in Venice by Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari from 1563 to 1585. They gave it this metaphorical use of the term: each work is a “ring” or “joy” of the collana.
Definition
A collection is characterized by having uniformity in the presentation, as well as by a certain affinity in the contents. For each book the same dimensions are used, the same type of cover, and also the same type of spine. In this regard, sometimes the same colours are used on the cover, and sometimes different colours or details are always systematically used. Generally, the grammage of the paper for each collection is always the same, as well as the typography applied, the cover design and page layout. Certain collections even get to fix the number of pages, for example, the books in the collection Que sais-je? always have 128 pages. A collection can be further subdivided into several series, for example, the collection Découvertes Gallimard contains seven series as well as several sub-collections. The volumes of the same collection are also characterized by a defined content or style. Thus, a literary collection will have, for example, novels in their original language, translated works, works with literary value of national authors, or regroup texts of a certain subject or a certain genre, et cetera. In terms of documentary works, there are collections of school or university textbooks, collections of research works and collections of practical books. Some collections are distinguished by a very strong orientation towards specialisation, such as collection on the study of Egyptology, collection on jurisprudence, on pharmacy, astronomy… others inversely by an encyclopaedic tendency. Some collections include both literary texts and documentary texts, such as Le Livre de Poche, others are specialised in the classic books. Undoubtedly, a publication in a collection format has its importance in terms of marketing. Given that a collection is characterized by a visual unity, with successive editions and with the help of propaganda, it can even lead to a degree of fidelity of the public, which obviously supports the commercial success of the collection. In many publishing houses, the tasks of selection of works and programming in general fall under the orbit of the “director of collection”. Certain collections have had such fame, that sometimes they are considered or can be considered almost as independent publishing houses, such is the case with the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade edited by Éditions Gallimard.
