In literary interpretation, paratext is material that surrounds a published main text (e.g., the story, non-fiction description, poems, etc.)
Paratext is most often associated with books, as they typically include a cover (with associated cover art), title, front matter (dedication, opening information, foreword, epigraph), back matter (endpapers, indexes, and colophons) footnotes, and many other materials not crafted by the author.
Major examples of the impacts of publisher-inserted material include the case of the 2009 young adult novel Liar, which was initially published with an image of a white girl on the cover, although the narrator of the story was identified in the text as black.
It also includes an epitext, which consists of elements such as interviews, publicity announcements, reviews by and addresses to critics, private letters and other authorial and editorial discussions – 'outside' of the text in question.
[3] Book scholar Nicholas Basbanes extends the concept of paratext to include illustrations, dust jackets, indexes, appendices, the thickness and weight of paper, typefaces, and binding.