SWE #20 Show Sold Separately with Jonathan Gray

Send us Fan Mail Embark with us and fandom studies expert Jonathan Gray as we explore the importance of paratexts in transmedia storytelling! Jonathan is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Show Sold Separately. His work examines how media entertainment and its audiences interact and examines how and where value and meaning are created. A principal part of this research is found exploring paratexts; the secondary and tertiary texts produced by both the fandom and entertainment entity to support, hype, and contextualize the larger pieces of content. Think the movie poster for a feature film, the fanfiction that focuses on a side character, and the action figure for a superhero. Paratexts are incredibly important to the transmedia ecosystem, as it allows your audience to form initial and new opinions of the content your produce. They refract messages to make new meanings and cause regenerative conversations between you and your audience. Paratexts are often seen as marketing or fan obsessions, but in reality they have immense power create a living story world. We spoke about what paratexts are and how to identify them and then examples of the power of paratext observing Superman and The Simpsons. We also explored how the independent artist can use paratexts in their own work to reframe messages and drive interest into their larger projects. If there is one episode you should listen to in this Story World Explorers season, make it this one! Support the show Are you an intrepid explorer with your own story world? You should be a guest on Story World Explorers! Connect with us here:

You can listen to SWE #20 Show Sold Separately with Jonathan Gray online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

SWE #20 Show Sold Separately with Jonathan Gray is an episode from Story World Explorers by Frank & Jack Konrath.

This episode is 61:26 long.

This episode was published on Aug 21, 2025.

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