Hey. Is there anywhere we can buy signed copies after the pre order phase? Me and my friend both bought copies but neither were signed. We ordered from Amazon and we live in Northern Ireland, if that helps.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Anonymous asked: Hey. Is there anywhere we can buy signed copies after the pre order phase? Me and my friend both bought copies but neither were signed. We ordered from Amazon and we live in Northern Ireland, if that helps.

The reason some people—mostly people who either ordered from very small stores that do not usually sell YA fiction or people who live abroad—are getting unsigned copies is extremely complicated and confusing. I will explain for those interested, BUT THE IMPORTANT THING is that if your preordered copy of The Fault in Our Stars was unsigned, HERE IS WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:

You need to email sparksflyup -at- gmail (.) com with your name, your address, and the store/web site from which you ordered the book. And I will figure out a way to fix it. It may take me a bit, but I will fix it.

So what happened? Well, the way books actually get distributed is incredibly complicated and byzantine, but basically Penguin goes to various stores and various web sites and says, “Hey, how many copies of this book do you want?” And the store says, “Um, four should be good.” And then Penguin is like, “Okay, so you’ll get four signed ones. Cool,” and then they go on to other accounts. There are lots and lots and lots of accounts, from Kroger to Target to individual bookstores to Amazon UK to Amazon DE.

And some of those places apparently did not ask for enough books in those ordering conversations, because they had not noticed how many preorders they actually had (it’s unprecedented for an author to sign this many books and very uncommon for web sites like amazon de or amazon uk to see this many preorders, particularly for an author who is not—to them—particularly successful). So then a few weeks before publication, once all the signed copies were spoken for, these places realized they didn’t have enough books and made last-second reorders, which were fulfilled with unsigned stock because the signed copies had already been distributed around the world by then.

So that is what happened. But we will fix it. I will sign your preorder, even if I have to do it from afar. Also, regardless of my scribble, I hope you like the book. :)