For all Highmatter Books special editions, your direct-from-publisher purchase includes "first choice" purchasing rights. This refers to your guaranteed right to buy the next book in the series/sequence, with a matching limitation number to your previous book(s), where applicable. This is typically implemented as an exclusive purchasing window, often 1 month long, during which you are guaranteed a copy of the new book if you complete your purchase within that window.

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.

What if I have the right to buy the book in the exclusivity window, but I don't buy it / can't afford it at that time / forget to buy it / miss the notification email?

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.

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 use, 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. Keep in mind that email address lookup for this portal is not case-sensitive, so if your email address isn’t working, it isn’t a capitalization error. Punctuation (e.g., periods/dots) does matter, though.

After you submit a rights transfer request, there is a three stage process:

• pending: In this stage, the original rights-holder has 24 hours to cancel the transfer for any reason. The future rights-holder will not have been notified yet.

• initiated: In this stage, 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 30 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.

• completed: Rights transfer completion occurs 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