How I am Spending My Saturday
Posted on July 12, 2014 Posted by John Scalzi 20 Comments
I’m signing signature sheets for the Subterranean Press limited signed edition of Unlocked. The amount you see there is what I’ve signed so far; subtract that from the height of the box to the right, and the height of what you have left over is how much I have yet to sign. So the day will consist of me watching movies while I sign my name more than a thousand times. I’ll be pacing myself so I don’t end up being a hand cramp attached to a body. There are worse lives to have.
Hope your Saturday is awesome. See you tomorrow.
I can’t even imagine. I can stress out about my signature just by signing one thing, and filling out the paperwork for my mortgage nearly killed me. It would take me a year to do a thousand signature sheets and I’d want to redo half of them before I was done. Do they send you extras in case you have some you need to reject? How often does that happen?
Am I the only one who had to google for what a “signature sheet” is? … and then wade through dozens of results for bed linens to find the correct information? I wonder why more authors don’t do this. I remember photos of Sanderson’s office with boxes piled high, as he personalized copies of his latest few books. Seems way more efficient to use “signature sheets.”
I think of the 19th-century U.S. Treasury official who signed a run of thousands of U.S. bonds that were to be shipped overseas the next day, permanently damaging his writing hand in the process. ISTR that the bonds ended up never being used (the deal fell through.)
You can always call John Green if you need any tips on physical therapy for the hand cramps.
I signed 10,000 tip-in signature sheets in three days once, for the Graphitti edition of MARVELS. And I did it in pencil, because the publisher told me that pencil was the traditional choice for signed editions in the book trade. So I had to bear down.
Couldn’t use that arm again for a week. I can still remember the pain.
Here’s a question: Do you have a particular process to signing those?
Those times when I have to sign multiple documents in one go, I’ll wedge the stack so I can flip through them from the bottom up, signing each one where applicable until I get to the top with the first looking a lot better than the last.
Neil Gaiman did 3000 the day of his Carnegie Hall event last month.
https://www.facebook.com/neilgaiman/posts/10151494791246016
Oops, sorry, from the date on that post that was from a more recent event. Here’s Carnegie Hall:
https://www.facebook.com/neilgaiman/photos/a.306989681015.155613.300224781015/10152145959821016/?type=1&relevant_count=1
ARGH. No, it was from 2013. Sorry sorry sorry.
Having received one of your signed editions, I can fully believe you are watching a movie while signing your name . . . er . . . moving the pen about.
Well,, one of that big stack is mine. So thank you.
Do an extra nice job on mine, please!
Am I the only one who’s wondering what movie John was watching?
Movies, rather…
I spent one day of a summer job between high school and college “personally signing” some letter that was getting sent to all employees of [some division] of [huge company]…”personally signing” with the CEO’s signature. Using a machine. That “signed” slower than anyone writes and needed to have each sheet of paper hand-fed-and-positioned for signing, no autofeeding. It was a long day.
So no signature stamp, then? Of course, not, that would not be Quixote as authentic….You could get your daughter to learn your signature and help out…oh, wait.. bad idea….I’ll be getting mine signed at Vroman’s. :)
Haha “quite” autocorrected to Quixote! I love my phone.
Thank you!
This is definitely a first world job.
As the future recipient of one of those signatures, I would like to say that I really do appreciate the effort. I suspect I may need to get an extra copy to read though since I tend to stick signed editions in a prominent place on the bookshelf and then refuse to read them in case I tear a page or get them dirty or something. It’s possible I have a problem there.