DAW Books launched in April 1972 with four original paperbacks each month, and for decades the books were consecutively numbered as volumes in the "DAW Book Collectors" series. Wollheim's own Annual SF volume was No. 5 in May 1972, and soon thereafter, in July, came the first volume of an annual series of horror anthologies, No. 13 in July 1972. This first volume was a reprint of a UK book published by Sphere in 1971. Richard Davis produced two more volumes for Sphere, and continued with DAW, though the 2nd and 3rd volumes in the two series do not correspond.

Gerald W. Page took over the DAW series with the fourth volume. His four volumes drew stories mostly from familiar genre sources, though he also published three or four original stories in each volume.

Karl Edward Wagner took over the series with the eighth volume, confining the contents to reprints, and produced another fourteen increasingly fat volumes concluding with Vol. XXII in 1994.

Most reprinted authors: Ramsey Campbell (23), Dennis Etchison (13), then Charles L. Grant, Brian Lumley, and Wayne Allen Sallee (10 each).

Most frequent sources: Twilight Zone (19), F&SF (18), Whispers (14), Interzone (10).