The Fault in Our Stars

If you follow me on pretty much any other site you have already seen my posts; you already know just how excited I am about this.  I am sorry if you follow me on all these sites, and it bores you.  I'm sorry, but I am going to post about it anyway, because this is a book blog and there is no way in hell that I wouldn't post about my favorite author.

Today, January 10, 2012, is the release date of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.  This is a date I've been waiting for for the past . . . oh . . . seven months? More?  I don't even know.  I have been waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

And now it's here.

For those of you who don't know, every single copy of the first printing is signed.  John Green individually signed every single one of the 150,000 books in the first printing plus 10,000 extras in case some were damaged.  He spent six hours a day for over a month bent over a stack of papers.  He got nerve damage in his hand and he still didn't stop.  I have never seen a better example of dedication.  Why did he do it? He did it as a thank you.  The inpour of preorders from nerdfighters across the globe was practically a phenomenon.  It happened before anyone ever saw the pitch, or the cover.  When all we knew was that it was a book, and it was John's.  Penguin looked at the thousands and thousands and thousands of fans and thought, Hmm.  I guess they really, really want it to come out, don't they?


Let's move the publishing date up three months. 


And this was John's way of saying thank you. This was his gift to his readers, this undeniable link.  Those hours spent signing and those hours we spent watching him, those hours we will spend bent over the pages of his book.  It's a promise there, between the writer and the reader.  With all the drama in this past week, so many people have forgotten that we work in partnership. We cannot exist without the other.  Authors need readers, and John Green has so much more than readers. He has a community hundreds of thousands strong that loves his writing and his ideas and just . . . him.  Because he is a brilliant author. Because he is an amazing person.

If you haven't preordered TFiOS . . . go out and buy it. Go now, before all the signatures are gone. Go and get a book, one of 160,000 signed by John Green himself so that every last reader could get at least a little piece of that writer-reader relationship to keep all for themselves.