In order to explain this, I think it's easier to quote
a Wikipedia article :
Quote:
In the United States, when a publisher collects previously serialised stories, such a collection is commonly referred to as either a trade paperback or as a graphic novel. These are books, typically squarebound and published with a card cover, containing no adverts. They generally collect a single story, which has been broken into a number of chapters previously serialised in comic books, with the issues collectively known as a story arc. Such trade paperbacks can contain anywhere from four issues (for example, there is Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross) to as many as twenty (The Death of Superman).
In continental Europe, especially Belgium and France, such collections are usually somewhat larger in size and published with a hardback cover, a format established by the Tintin' series in the 1930's. These are referred to as comic albums,[27] a term which in the United States refers to anthology books. The United Kingdom has no great tradition of such collections, although during the 1980's Titan publishing launched a line collecting stories previously published in 2000 AD.
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From what I know about american comics (biased by being in another country), I'd say you can add the following usual differencies :
- the size : here, most of the time, the page is in A4 format
- the length : an album is usually 48 to 60 pages, and a story runs most of the time on 3 to 6 albums, I'd say. There are longer series, over 20 albums, but they are far from being the majority.