So far, MLP’s special editions include The Annotated Firebird trilogy by Kathy Tyers; Oxygen–Writer’s Journey Edition by John B. Olson and Randy Ingermanson; and The Restorer–Expanded Edition by Sharon Hinck.
“I want as many roads as possible leading to MLP,” says MLP founder and editor Jeff Gerke. “My true goal was that whenever anyone thought of the ultimate source of any Christian fantasy or science fiction, they would think of MLP. That meant that the classics in our little subgenre should be MLP books too.”
Simply republishing the out-of-print novels didn’t make financial sense. “We needed to turn them into special editions because people can buy the original versions for 38 cents off eBay,” Jeff explains. “In that case, why would someone pay $15.99 for our version? Only if it included new bonus content and was in some way deluxe.”
The authors approached adding bonus content to their novels in different ways. Randy Ingermanson, who built a following by teaching the craft of novel writing, says, “We created it with fiction writers in mind. I publish a free monthly electronic magazine with about 30,000 subscribers, and I knew they’d be interested in learning more about how to get a novel published.”
Sharon Hinck shares, “I dug into the books and thought about characters that I wanted to know more about … or how another character in the scene may have viewed the same occurrence differently.” She also added a devotional guide to the editions, drawing from the many emails she’s received about her novels’ themes.
For years, Kathy Tyers had kept a notebook filled with anecdotal information about her Firebird series, and MLP’s edition includes “maps, the author’s reminiscences and further insights into the plot and world-building and cast of characters,” she says. Publishing her trilogy as a 3-in-1 special edition also gave her the opportunity to bring books four (Wind and Shadow) and five (Daystar) to life.
While the main text of most of the MLP editions remains unchanged aside from small tweaks and corrections, Randy Ingermanson took things a step further. “John and I had 10 more years of experience as novelists when we revised Oxygen, so we took the opportunity to rewrite a number of scenes. Those scenes weren’t horrible—the first edition of the book won some nice awards—but we’re perfectionists and we saw plenty of things to improve.”
As for readers who already own the original editions, Sharon Hinck says they should consider buying the new editions, too. “If they liked the original story, this is an opportunity to experience it with more depth and fullness. I’m the type who loves the extras on a movie DVD, so my hope is that the new editions of The Sword of Lyric books will provide that same sort of great experience.”
Kathy Tyers notes that speculative fiction readers might be more willing to purchase a special edition. “If a reader’s preferred genre is historical fiction, she can find information in many other places–online, in libraries, etc. But it can be harder to find sources for this information on speculative fiction.”
Are there more special editions in Marcher Lord Press’s future? Jeff Gerke foresees a few. “Beyond the series we’re already releasing, there are a few others I’d love to republish. But it’s not a long list. We don’t have a lot of classics yet in our niche, after all. MLP will always be known primarily as a publisher of original Christian speculative fiction. But I love that new groups of people—each of these republished books’ micro-audiences—have come to learn about MLP through these re-issues.”