What follows is a guest post from Kate Henricks, sophomore English major at Hendrix College.
About three years ago—well before movie theaters all over the country began amassing enough tears for John Green to fill his own personal saltwater pool—The Fault in Our Stars author found himself topping both the Amazon and Barnes & Noble bestseller lists with pre-orders for a book that wouldn’t publish for another year. Noting this Rowling-esque success and sensing the demand, the publisher accelerated production, moving the publication date a full five months forward. To compound the chaos—and excitement—Green announced that he would be signing every pre-ordered first-printing copy of the book. Not book plates, mind you; Green convinced his publisher to send the first page of all 150,000 pre-ordered copies to his house so that he could tattoo each with his “J-scribble” signature before sending them back to be bound in with the rest of the pages.
This move was, at the time, extraordinarily uncommon—if not entirely unprecedented. But it soon gained steam. Later that year, Maureen Johnson, a fellow YA author and friend of Green, decided to sign every pre-ordered copy of her new novel, The Name of the Star, which was purchased through Austin-based Book People. For the novel’s sequel, she signed pre-orders to over 20 different independent book stores in the U.S. and Canada. As Johnson and Green are longtime supporters of one another’s work, this move wasn’t immediately indicative of just how greatly Green’s actions were to impact the industry.
Fast forward to the present, a favorite poet of mine, Tyler Knott Gregson, announced via Instagram that his new book, Chasers of the Light, is available for pre-order. With this announcement, Gregson also shared that he will be offering a beautiful custom-designed bookplate, complete with signature, to be mailed for free to everyone who pre-orders his book. (Just 24 hours after this announcement, Gregson topped the Amazon bestseller lists for both art books and poetry books.) After seeing this post, I immediately thought of Green and wondered if perhaps Gregson was a fan—a fleeting thought as I proceeded to check my email. I noticed then in my inbox an 
email I had received a few days ago from Book People advertising their “Signed First” club. At this, those little, flashing “YOU HAVE SEEN THIS BEFORE” signs stared going off, begging me to make the connection. So, like any good child of the computer age, I googled it. “Signed Pre-order Book” turned up results for more authors and publishers than I could count—all doing exactly what Green had done three years earlier. At this point, I am fairly convinced that I’ve spotted a trend started by an author I’ve adored for nearly eight years.
As cool as it is though, any trend that becomes something of a game changer for an industry deserves to have its motives questioned. Upon first impression, I’m inclined to see this trend as a positive one. Like the Book People ad says, it gives people the opportunity to get a signed copy of a book that they might otherwise not be able get signed—a very cool thing for both authors and readers. That said, this trend changes the tradition of how most readers acquire the signatures of their favorite authors. As someone who has been brought up to believe that experiences are more valuable than things, I think a handshake has more worth than an autograph.
In line with that belief, though Green had already signed my copy, I attended a reading and signing in Austin for TFiOS that was so packed it required ticketed entrance and a subsequent four hour wait in line for the chance for Green to personalize my signed book. I fan-girled hard for the event and wore a T-Shirt I made based on one the book’s protagonist wore. While signing Green asked if I dressed like her on purpose, to which I replied “Hazel? … kinda.” This was a near perfect reenactment of the scene from the book when the protagonist meets her favorite author. My little sister can attest to the fact that I nearly wept as we were ushered away from the table after this encounter. It was easily one of the greatest moments of my life thus far.
And yet, as a proud member of the Harry Potter generation, I can willingly admit that I would probably fork over a kidney, several pints of blood, a few toes, and then seriously debate how much I really like my left arm for a signed Harry Potter book. Having made that slightly ludicrous admission, I have to wonder why I care about a sharpie scribble in a book I already love. There’s no experience to owning pages stained with someone’s ink. It increases monetary value of the object, yes, but I have no plans to sell. Why do I care, and why do I want it? Why is the demand so much a given that it has become a ploy to sell books?
To answer that question, I think we have to back up to the origin. When Green decided to sign every single pre-order of his book, he was already at the top of the bestseller list; this clearly wasn’t a gimmick to sell more books. If we credit Green with starting this trend, it cannot be said that this trend comes from a dollar-sign driven desire to increase sales. So why then? Why did Green have 150,000 pieces of paper sent to his home so that he could spend the 75 days he was allotted, signing his name in various colors 2,000 times every 24 hours? That’s ridiculous, so why do it?
I’m not quite important enough to ask Green this question myself, but once upon a time, he said the following in answer to a different question asked of him by many, many people: “Every single day,” he said, “I get emails from aspiring writers asking my advice about how to become a writer, and here is the only advice I can give: Don’t make stuff because you want to make money; it will never make you enough money. Don’t make stuff because you want to get famous, because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people. And work hard on making those gifts in the hope that those people will notice. Maybe they will notice how hard you worked, and maybe they won’t. And if they don’t notice, I know it’s frustrating, but ultimately that doesn’t change anything, because your responsibility is not to the people you’re making the gift for but to the gift itself.”
Knowing this about Green, a part of me chooses to believe that when 150,000 people skyrocketed him to the top of the Amazon and Barnes & Nobel bestseller lists, Green found himself faced with a problem. John Green is one man, one North American man who tours very little in the U.S. and even less in Canada (but that’s another story entirely). He couldn’t shake 150,000 hands and have 150,000 moments where he created scenes from the story or told you that your shoes are cool or simply shared a smile, because getting in the same room as all of those 150,000 readers is a feat that I’m comfortable classifying as impossible. So instead, he took 150,000 moments and in each one put his sharpie tip on a page. By doing so, he said, “I was here, physically on this page that will someday be yours. I don’t know you. I’ve never seen your face. You don’t know that right now, in this moment, I am making you a gift. You don’t know that are we having a moment, but we are.”
And so he had a moment with each of the 150,000 readers. Maybe your moment was on day 56, maybe it was signature 1,002 of the day. Maybe Green was sitting at his desk next to a ham sandwich and a pile of used up sharpies while you were in math class not really understanding the quadratic equation. Maybe that was your moment. He didn’t know it, you didn’t know it, the page didn’t know it, and the pen didn’t know it. But in that moment, he signed his name on a piece of paper that was bound into a book now sitting on your bedside table underneath your retainer case and on top of a receipt for gas, Twizzlers, and Gatorade. And that moment was a gift for you.
I must say, this trend—and the reason it’s a trend—is pretty cool.