Paratexts

Paratexts is the concept of anything that may accompany the main text of a piece of media, whether it be industry or audience created. Paratexts have a great influence of our understanding over the main text before we are able to even see it and can be a very powerful tool in advertising.


But first we must define exactly what a "text" is.
As opposed to the more common belief that a text is related to written works. In this circumstance, anything is a text.
Film, TV, Book, Websites, Music, Social Media, etc.

Gérard Genette defines paratext as those things in a published work that accompany the text, things such as the author's name, the title, preface or introduction, or illustrations.As opposed to the more common understanding that text is specific to written works, here we will be referring to it as the main object of any form of media.

Paratexts themselves consist of peritexts and epitexts.
Peritexts are images and text elements which directly surround the main text. For example, the cover of a book would be a peritext of the book itself.
Epitexts are all the related text which surround the main text. Epitexts can alse be fan-made. For example, an anime music video could be an epitext to both the anime and music it uses.

Parartexts can often fall into one (or multiple) of the following categories:

• Publicity
• Recap
• Oreintation
• Spoiler
• Remix

Publicity texts will most likely be created by the industry for promotional and advertising purposes. These will be things like posters, TV adverts, etc.

Recap would be a short video you may see on a TV show that recaps what happened last epsiode/season.

Orientation 

Spoilers are often audience created, in which an individual may post an important plot point or twist onto a messageboard.

Remix are often audience created, but can also be industry made. Remixes take the original media and mold into into something new. Any kind of fan trailer, or song remix are good examples of this.