For all Highmatter Books special editions, your direct-from-publisher purchase includes "first choice" purchasing rights. The “first choice” right to purchase refers to an individual’s eligibility for the initial pre-sale period for a Highmatter Edition book. During this pre-sale period, which is typically 1 month long, all eligible individuals are guaranteed the right to purchase the next book in sequence in a given series and to have that book identified with a certain limitation number (generally, the same limitation number as their past and future books in the series). After the pre-sale period, any unpurchased books will go on sale to the general public; the first come, first served nature of the general sale means the only way to guarantee you receive a copy of the book is to hold “first choice” purchasing rights.

There are two ways to get book rights:

• purchasing from Highmatter Books directly: Buy a book in your desired sequence/series during the open sales window.

• purchasing from a third-party re-seller: Buy a book from a trusted re-seller and ensure they are willing and able to complete the rights transfer process using our rights management portal.

The exclusivity window is time-limited. It’s possible that some eligible purchasers will not complete their purchase during the window for any number of reasons—unable to afford the book at that time, change mind about buying Highmatter Editions of the series, forget to make a purchase and miss notification emails, etc.

If you, for any reason, do not buy your guaranteed copy during the exclusivity window, it will be released back into our stock for the general open sales period. We are unable to extend the exclusivity window for any reason; we recommend you purchase as soon as possible within the exclusivity window, so that there's still time for any unforeseen issues to be resolved. Under no circumstances will we cancel a purchase made by another customer during the open sales period in order to accommodate a purchasing request by a previous rights-holder who missed the exclusivity window. If you miss the exclusivity window and still manage to buy a copy during open sales, we will be happy to match your new copy to your original limitation number.

When you transfer your rights from your current email address on-file to another email address, the new email address will then be the only email capable of accessing the portal for that limitation number. This means that access to the new email address will be required to make any other changes to that limitation number. Usually, this kind of transfer occurs after you've sold your book to another person, but technically the rights are separate from the physical book and can be sold separately.

Previously, we manually maintained a list of rights-holders. Now, we’ve developed a new rights management portal, which can be used for automated self-service transfer of “first choice” purchasing rights.

We are unable to transfer rights by any other method outside of this portal. Due to the possibility of fraud and the difficulty in verifying photos over the Internet, we are not able to accept photos of the book in your possession as proof that you are a rights-holder (also, technically the physical book and the “first choice” purchase rights are different things, anyway). If you’ve bought a book and the seller did not complete this form, you do not have “first choice” purchasing rights. In some cases, we may be able to help finalize a rights transfer by contacting the seller directly, but in all cases we must have proof of transfer that originates from the original email on-file. For this reason, we strongly recommend you carefully vet online re-sellers and make sure they understand the rights transfer process prior to you making a purchase.

This means that the email address you used to login to the portal is not on-file with any book rights, according to our records.

If you purchased a copy of Empire of Silence during our original Kickstarter, use the email address you used to sign up for the campaign. (If you entered a separate preferred email address in the post-purchase survey, use that email address instead.) If you purchased a copy of a Highmatter Books special edition through our website, look for the confirmation email you received after your purchase to determine which email is on file. If you purchased a copy through a third-party re-seller, confirm that the seller completed the rights transfer process, then look for the rights transfer email.

If you still can’t figure out which email address you used, contact us. Be sure to include your limitation number. We will then send an email to the email address on file for that limitation number so you can identify it.

Once a rights transfer request is submitted and successfully initiated, it cannot be canceled for any reason. The only possible exception to this is well-documented email account fraud (as the fraudster submitting the transfer request would have needed access to your email address on-file to receive the one time password code needed to login and complete the request).

After the rights transfer is initiated, the future rights-holder will receive an email informing them of the rights transfer and asking them to accept or decline it. They will have 10 days to respond to the transfer request before it is auto-declined. (This prevents rights from getting “stuck” at incorrectly entered email addresses.) If the transfer request is declined, the rights automatically revert to the original rights holder.

Rights transfer completion occurs immediately after the recipient confirms the rights transfer request. After this, the original rights-holder cannot revoke the transfer or otherwise access the portal for the limitation number.

A limitation number refers to the number, letter, or other identifier assigned to a special edition book produced with a limited number of copies. For most Highmatter Books editions, this is the number or letter hand-written on the signature page of the book. For un-lettered and un-numbered copies that are still limited to a certain number of copies, upon purchase you will be assigned a brief alphanumeric code. This will not be printed or written anywhere in your book, but does identify you as a rights-holder for the next book in the sequence.

When producing any fine edition of a book, the publisher will usually order several extra copies of the book in order to more easily replace customers’ copies that were damaged in-transit, during shipping, etc. If a customer’s book arrives damaged, we usually ask that they return the book to us; we will then prepare one of the extra copies (by signing it, numbering it, etc.) and send that one to the customer as a replacement. Depending on the level of damage of the book, we may re-sell it as a damaged, non-rights-holding copy, or we may destroy it.

Because there is no way to know how much or how often damage will occur during the fulfillment shipping process, there is no way to know how many of these extra books will be needed as replacements and how many will be leftover as “publisher’s copies” (PCs) until the very end of the fulfillment process. After all rights-holding customers have their books safely in-hand, we can then start to sell PCs. PCs are sold on a case-by-case basis, and may or may not be discounted (based on the level of damage to the book). Importantly, purchasing a PC does not confer “first choice” purchasing rights, as these books do not have their own limitation numbers.

Key differences:

• limited edition / “true” / original copies: guaranteed to arrive undamaged (and replaced if not); sold with “first choice” purchasing rights (guaranteed opportunity to buy the next book in sequence); have associated limitation number; sold at full price

• publisher’s copies: sold as-is (may have damage already, disclosed at purchase; if damaged in transit, may be subject to reimbursement via shipping insurance but will not be outright replaceable); sold without “first choice” purchasing rights (no guaranteed opportunity to buy the next book in sequence); no associated limitation number; may or may not be sold at full price

No. Highmatter Edition books are exclusively available through our website (here).

We do! Highmatter Books is, among other things, a fully independent publisher of fine press editions, owned by Christopher and Jenna Ruocchio. Production and manufacture are overseen by CASTLE Printing and Binding out of Southeast Michigan. Christopher himself oversees art direction, and is responsible for the development and quality control of the finished product (as well as writing the books in the first place, of course), while Jenna is responsible for our storefront, sales, customer service, and for more than a bit of our graphic design.

It’s important to note that the Highmatter Edition is the Diamond Edition, under a new name. Our relationship with Diamond Editions (the company) broke down following the conclusion of the campaign to support the rollout on Empire of Silence, and we went our separate ways. The Highmatter edition of Howling Dark (and all subsequent volumes after it) takes all its design cues from what was established for Empire of Silence, uses the same materials, etc, and so the Highmatter editions of the Sun Eater series are the natural continuation of what began with the Diamond Edition of Empire of Silence. To aid in the transition, we will be issuing a new, Highmatter-branded dust-jacket for Empire of Silence with each copy of Howling Dark sold.