Edition Summaries
Retrofit Edition:
In addition to the complete source text and features of any other edition, the Retrofit releases contain a sizable amount of 100% original content. This material takes form as new chapters, short stories, essays, poetry, illustrations, artwork, or any combination of the above, created by the Empty-Grave folks and/or collaborating artists or writers. The Retrofit edition allows us to stretch our creative legs while providing fans of the source material a bit of contemporary meat to sink their teeth into – if they want to. Although rare, when our original content at all interacts with the source material – such as interior writing or illustrations – Empty-Grave ensures the original material is presented as well.
Tango Edition:
The Tango Edition contains all the content of a Vanilla Edition and often delves into the data-parsing and contextual reporting of an Extended Edition. The Tango’s primary thrust, however, is to examine two manifestations of the same work back to back. These releases will always contain the full original text in addition to some other version, format, or release of that text – be it a novel and screenplay, a novel and its rough draft, or a novel and whatever it was adapted from.
Like Extended Editions, Tango Editions can be valuable tools for students and educators as they often present data and compare materials in ways not previously available. The Cincinnati Kid is a great example of the educational value of a Tango release. In it we find the original novel text as well as a complete shooting draft from the 1965 film. Dialogue is directly compared between the two texts – the print release notes page numbers where common dialogue occurs whereas the eBook release contains a valuable reciprocal-linking system where readers can instantly hop from matched dialogue in one text to the other and back again. It also has an extensive summary of character and plot similarities and differences.
Motley Edition:
The Motley Edition is meant to create a rudimentary “if you like this, you may like that,” system via supplementary content not directly connected or related to the main content. This supplementary content typically consists of a sampling of other work but it may also manifest as complete works of a shorter nature–poems, short stories, novellas. The secondary intent of this edition is to raise awareness of other publications that were, or are, in danger of slipping away.
Extended Edition:
Extended Editions offer unique supplementary content in addition to content of a more traditional nature, such as biographies and bibliographies. This material will typically take the form of reports on parsed data – such as word and phrase frequency – but it may also be a summary or examination of historical or cultural context.
Extended content typically leverages eBook features that paper books would almost never, and sometimes could never, provide. In The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright we included a comprehensive word frequency report that simply would not be available in paper format because traditional publishers would never take the risk of adding printing costs to a run that may or may not make money. On paper the task would be delegated to only the most dedicated fans; the ones that would either scan the book, run OCR, edit, and then write an application to do the work or grab pencils and a few reams of paper and start taking notes.
In eBooks and PODs such features are still not simple but they are always possible – and with no upfront investment in paper, ink, shipping, or storing we can create a product that is as long or image-laden as we want. This allows us to provide readers with an experience that can not be replicated by traditional print publishers.
Vanilla Edition:
Empty-Grave ensures all releases contain new content although some books – typically non-fiction and pulp-fiction – do not warrant many additions. Our Vanilla releases always have redesigned or newly designed covers – including teaser text on the reverse – as well as an editor’s note, bibliography, and biography.
Original Release:
Empty-Grave’s primary focus is on republishing and revitalizing work that is in danger of extinction but we sometimes release previously unpublished work by new writers and artists. Our other editions are always identified by their type but original releases may or may not – depending on the wishes of the author – have the identifier “Empty-Grave Original Release” on the front cover or in sales-related materials.