What Is a Partwork? DeAgostini, Hachette and the Finished Build

Our thesis: a finished partwork is a document of patience, and it should be read like one. The series tells you what it was meant to be, the issue count tells you whether it got there, and the build tells you who finished it and how well. The word and its form are defined in our Lexicon entry on the partwork; this guide follows the format to Japan and onto the display shelf.

At a glance

An old idea in instalments

Selling a long work in parts is older than the magazine. Between 1728 and 1732 Nicolas Tindal's English translation of Paul de Rapin's History of England was issued by a London printer in monthly parts, and a rival printer answered with another translation in weekly sixpenny instalments. Many of Charles Dickens's novels first reached readers the same way in the nineteenth century, and in the twentieth whole encyclopaedias were sold as partworks and then bound.

What DeAgostini added in 1959 was a business. A partwork has a fixed length and a finite life, it is sold at newsagents and launched with heavy television advertising, and it lives on the reader's wish to finish. In Britain, launches traditionally came each January, and in 2003 partworks were the fourth best-selling magazine sector there, after television guides and women's weeklies and monthlies.

How Japan took the format

Japan calls the form bunsatsu hyakka, a divided encyclopaedia, or simply a partwork. The first is usually given as a weekly world encyclopaedia launched in 1970 by Nippon Mail Order, which sold by post; the Asahi Shimbun newspaper entered in 1971 and sold through its newspaper delivery agents. Those two companies had the field to themselves until the late 1980s.

DeAgostini arrived in 1988 with a series called Aircraft, first in partnership with the Kyoto publisher Dohosha and then with Shoshin Shobo, also of Kyoto, which it absorbed in May 1997 to take its present name. Larger and mid-sized publishers followed through the 1990s, and in the 2000s more than twenty new series were launched each year. Hachette Collections Japan, part of the French Lagardère group, was founded in March 2003 and opened with Weekly Titanic, launched on 9 July 2003 and planned at 100 issues. Shogakukan is usually counted third after the two.

The Japanese series are planned in Japan. DeAgostini's Japanese company devises and publishes its own titles to suit the domestic market rather than taking orders from Italy or Britain, which is why so many builds are Japanese subjects: the Nissan Skyline, the Honda NSX, the Imperial Navy submarine I-400, a traditional inn and the robots of Japanese anime.

The economics inside the box

The first issue is the hook. In Japan it is usually priced at around half the regular issue, sometimes less, and launches are concentrated around television advertising and subscription offers such as a free binder. The length of a series is published at the start, but it can change. DeAgostini's Weekly Railway Data File was planned at 100 issues and ran to 300; a fortnightly taxi series planned at 30 stopped at 7, and a weekly build of the Shiden-kai fighter planned at 100 ended at 6. Some series were sold first in a test region and never reached the whole country.

Those facts shape the object in front of you. Long builds are expensive to finish, and many readers stop part of the way through. In our handling, that is why a completed build, finished, working and with its paperwork, is a different object from a run of issues: the finished model has survived the series' own attrition, and its owner has paid in years as well as money.

Reading a finished build

  • Completeness. Count the issues and parts against the published total, and remember that a series may have been extended. Magazines, binders and bonus items belong to the record.
  • Function. Partwork models often carry lights, sound, motors or remote control. We test them and say plainly what works and what does not, as in a one-eighth Countach whose engine sound works but whose lights need repair.
  • The builder's hand. In our handling, glue marks, stripped screws and misaligned panels show in close photographs, so we take them. A good builder shows in shut lines and in wiring that is hidden.
  • Upgrades. Owners improve their builds. A Skyline GT-R34 with a speaker upgrade is described as upgraded, not as factory.
  • The case. Display cases and dioramas are often part of the series, and a complete one is part of the value. The grading words we use are set out in our entry on condition ranks.

Where the record differs

Ask where the partwork began and two answers come back. English histories point to London printers of the 1720s and their monthly parts. Japanese histories begin with the French Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert, launched in 1751 and issued volume by volume, and then name DeAgostini's 1959 series as the origin of the modern form. Both are right about different things: the first is about selling in parts, the second about an encyclopaedia completed in parts. The modern build-it series, with a model rather than a book at the end, is DeAgostini's.

In the archive

Finished builds sit on the scale models and display replicas shelf. Film and television are well represented: a half-scale interactive R2-D2 with all 100 issues and its display case joins the Star Wars collection, and a remote-control Godzilla of 1954 with its full diorama stands in the Godzilla collection, read in our Godzilla collecting guide. A one-eighth KITT from Knight Rider, all 110 issues, completes the screen cars.

Japan builds itself too. A Hachette I-400 submarine with sound and its case, a one-eighteenth Zero Type 52 with retracting gear and a one-twentieth traditional inn with working LEDs sit beside a Kodansha communication robot Atom from the weekly Astro Boy series, whose character is read in our Astro Boy collecting guide. And the format is not only models: a DeAgostini jazz LP collection, issues 1 to 85, sealed, is a partwork too.

Answered plainly

What is a partwork?

A publication issued as a planned series of magazine-like parts, weekly or fortnightly, that together form a reference work or, often, a complete model.

Why are completed partwork models scarce?

Series run for months or years, some are extended, and many readers stop before the end. A finished, working build has survived all of that.

Is a completed build from Japan the same as a European one?

Not always. DeAgostini's Japanese company plans its own titles, so many Japanese series, and their magazines, were never issued elsewhere.

Should a partwork model be sold with its magazines?

Ideally, yes. The magazines carry the instructions and the issue count, and they help confirm what the series contained.

A partwork asks one question of its owner every week: will you finish? The builds on our shelves are the answers of people who did. Read the series, count the issues, then look closely at the hand that put it together. That is our reading.

Further reading

Sources

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