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Permalink Reply by Mike White on June 4, 2018 at 7:09am

The first signed copies are hitting eBay--what's everyone think: good or autopen?

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Permalink Reply by Mike White on June 4, 2018 at 7:39am

Another copy posted to eBay:

I guess that settles it.

The bookstores I spoke to with regard to my preorders told me that the publishers assured them that the books would be handsigned, so someone apparently lied to someone.

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Permalink Reply by Mike White on June 4, 2018 at 11:56am

Another one.

And another:

I gotta ask: are these Clintons just standard variations a couple different matrices or did he actually sign?

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Permalink Reply by Mike White on June 4, 2018 at 12:29pm

Another one:

The more of these I see, the less sure I'm getting. Maybe it's the angle on some of the photos?

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Permalink Reply by Mike White on June 4, 2018 at 1:09pm

I feel like it's safe to rule on this particular Patterson style, at least.

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Permalink Reply by Mike White on June 4, 2018 at 11:05pm

Well, now things are heating up:

That's the first repeating Patterson I've seen of that style.

I can't tell off-hand at the moment if that was a new Patterson style or if the different thicknesses of the markers account for the minor differences in letter formation.

And, of course, another Patterson we've already seen:

And another from the same seller:

You'd think they'd notice that they have two identical Patterson signatures...

They got a different one for the third though (which is nothing we haven't seen yet):

More of the same:

At this point, the Pattersons are obvious. What's throwing me off is the Clintons.

If someone else wants to chime in, I'm not sure if we've seen a repeating Clinton.

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Permalink Reply by Mike White on June 4, 2018 at 11:09pm

This Patterson is a new one:

This one actually resembles his legit booksigning signatures.

But, of course, it's not:

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Permalink Reply by Mike White on June 4, 2018 at 11:29pm

What are everyone's thoughts on this Clinton?

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Permalink Reply by Mike White on June 5, 2018 at 5:00am

A number in the books shown in this thread have now sold without any disclaimer whatsoever that the Patterson signature isn't hand signed. In fact, several of them stated just the opposite.

One seller (whose offer included a COA), when pointed toward this thread to highlight the problem with the Patterson in the book they listed (then sold), responded to my message by telling me when the book event was. I'm not sure why thought it relevant, but they gave no indication that they'd alert their buyer or do anything to make right.

Another seller, when pointed toward identical examples of the book they listed, acknowledged that the books appeared to autopens, and then...did absolutely nothing. Their books are still listed as though they were actually signed by James Patterson.

When I mentioned to another seller that their copies had apparent Patterson autopens, they responded that they "have a couple of his books" and none of them are the same. I can't say why they thought that relevant, given that the problem is that everyone else's books are the same as theirs (at least the one pictured with their listing), but they also proceeded to do absolutely nothing to adjust their description.

In fact, of every seller I've spoken to, only one has taken down their listing so far.

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Permalink Reply by JXE on June 5, 2018 at 7:51am

Thank you for putting this together. I was looking through them on ebay today and I saw a couple examples of the same Patterson signature in different books. I think the Pattersons are clearly autopens. It looks like it doesn't even matter if they're signed bookplates or signed directly on the book, either. It looks like you can find duplicates of the book pages too. 

So, with that said, how about Clinton? I can't find any repeating Clinton signatures at this point. What do you think?

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Permalink Reply by Mike White on June 5, 2018 at 8:27am

The ones that are signed on the book page appear to be "tip in" pages. If that is the case, it'd mean that it wasn't the book that was signed, but, rather, just that page (no different than the bookplate, only it gives a different feel). As  such, it'd make sense that they were handled in the same manner.

That being said, I've seen one copy of the book that didn't have a Patterson that I've seen yet and appeared to be the real deal (at least in terms of autopens--I can't speak to forgeries, as I don't know either signature that well). It was signed on the title page, so it wasn't a tip-in. I have no idea where it came from, but I imagine that we'll be seeing more of them this afternoon, since today is an actual book signing at Barnes & Noble in New York.

The Clintons are throwing me off, if, for no other reason, than the logic of it. If you told me when I first started this last week that one of the signatures would be good and the other would be an autopen, I'd have said "I figured as much", but this wouldn't have been what I meant.

I've looked at pretty much every signed copy of the book on eBay, sold & unsold, and even saved & sorted the images by attribute. There are no two that are identical. There are also no tell-tale dots, and, on some, the line thicknesses vary by stroke.

I'm not seeing anything in the signatures themselves that has me thinking that the Clintons are bad.

But, at the same time, it doesn't...feel...right.

Of course, there's an explanation for why the Clinton signatures would be good--when people think of autopenned pre-signed books being passed off as legitimately signed, the first names that often come up are Hillary Clinton & Sarah Palin. Hillary, to my knowledge, only made that mistake once, and, due to the backlash, never did it again. It wouldn't necessarily be crazy to say that both Clintons took away a lesson from that, but Patterson didn't, as he's never been faced with such.

Honestly, I don't know what to think about the Clinton signatures. Autopens are a lot more advanced now than they were when a lot of the guides were written. I don't know how many of the tips that we all know & use are still viable--especially if we're discussing a top of the line machine running with the intention of fooling people, rather than solely for practicality.

I want to hope that the machine isn't anywhere near advanced enough to make the Clinton signatures look this realistic, and I like to think that such an advanced machine did exist, it wouldn't even be practical or possible.

I've also looked at a number of these books, but, compared to the grand scheme of things, it's still an incredibly small sample size. If they changed autopen matrices (which is an outdated term, but, at the moment, I can't think of better) for even every 500 pages, catching it would be a fluke at this point. If they then took the time to adjust things like speed and pressure for every 200 books, it'd make it that much harder.

If nothing else, we can say that they didn't use the same autopen machine--which can be seen as a point in the "real" column, depending on your point of view.

In other words, I have no reason to think they're anything but hand-signed, but, at the same time, I can't say that I think they're hand-signed.

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Permalink Reply by Mike White on June 8, 2018 at 11:49am

Having a copy of the book in hand, I can confirm that the copies signed on the book are, in fact, on tip in pages.

I can also say that my Patterson is an autopen (I recognized it right away) but the Clinton doesn't match any I've seen yet.

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