Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday.  It's time for an unboxing video.  

So as previously noted, if you open up any of these boxes, you'll find, you know, yet another box.  But it is not boxes all the way down, because if you open up this box, what you'll find is paper.  Lots of paper.  Like, that particular box contains 2,000 sheets and I am signing those sheets of paper one at a time over and over again and I've been doing it off and on for about six months, actually.  

It's been a little bit hard to keep this all a secret, but when I announced last week that I finally have a new book coming out, Turtles All the Way Down, coming out October 10th, lots of people were like, are you gonna sign all the pre-orders?  Will all the pre-orders be signed?  No.  I wanna be very clear about that.  In fact, there is a website, willallpreordersofturtlesallthewaydownbesigned.com.  No.  

So the only way to sign all the pre-orders for a book is to sign the entire first printing.  For The Fault in Our Stars, that was 150,000 copies.  Some of you might remember this, which Sarah made for me in 2011 to help me, you know, chart my path to 150,000 signatures because I did sign almost all of the pre-orders for that book.

But Turtles All The Way Down is gonna have a first printing of like, 1.5 million copies and it's just not possible to sign that many books.  I looked into it.  Maybe somebody could do it, but not me.  However, I am going to sign 200,000 copies of the book, hopefully slightly more, but at least 200,000.  Again, just to emphasize, this does not mean that all pre-orders of Turtles All The Way Down will be signed, because they won't.  For one thing, this is only going to work in the US and Canada, I'm really sorry if you live outside the US and Canada, but on the upside, by not being American, you probably get universal healthcare so maybe that's even worth more than an autograph?

Okay, so in the book world there are these things called ISBN numbers.  Every book has one.  They used to be ten digit numbers, now they're 13 digits, and for many years, a large percentage of my job was typing ISBN numbers into a database, so as it happens, I know a lot about ISBN numbers.  For instance, each publisher has its own particular ISBN prefix, 0-06 is Harper Collins, 0-316 is Little Brown, 1-224 is the University of Chicago Press, I could go on, but you'd get bored.  In fact, my first thought when I found out Looking for Alaska was gonna be published by Dutton was "I'm gonna be 0-525-"!  

Incidentally, I'm very proud, all these years later, to still be published by Dutton and still be a 0-525- but I am on a tangent.

Right.  So.  Turtles All The Way Down has two ISBN numbers and one of those ISBN numbers is for signed books.  Everyone's gonna have some signed copies.  Your local bookstore will have some, Target will have some, Amazon will have some, et cetera, and you will have the highest chance, although still not a guarantee, of getting a signed book if you order that ISBN number.  There are many links in the Doobly-Doo to buy the book with that ISBN number from all over the place.  But let me just quickly say that if I were you, I would order the book from my local bookstore.

So yeah, that is the ISBN for the signed edition.  It doesn't cost any more than the regular edition, it's just more likely to have a signature.  Also, Sarah took this from 2011 and made me this for 2017.  It's a thermometer resting on the back of a turtle that is itself resting on the back of another turtle presumably ad infinitum.  As you can see here, since January, working when I had extra time, I have reached 80,000 books, and then I have like about two months of just zrbajarb yeah, there.

By the way, if you're wondering what 80,000 sheets of paper looks like, this is 38, fidget spinner for scale, and there's another 42,000.  Most of the pages are just signed, but about three percent have a DFTBA on them, then there's also a bunch of them that have Yetis drawn by Sarah.  There's also a few that Alice has circled in hot pink, and there are several hundred that Henry has drawn Pokeballs on.  It's kind of a family affair, this signing thing

So Hank, that's the news.  I have a new book coming out.  It's called Turtles All The Way Down.  I am so excited and also so relieved.  I am going to sign 200,000 copies, or hopefully slightly more, and if you live in the US or Canada, you can pre-order a signed copy at your local bookstore or via the links in the Doobly-Doo.  

Hank, I gotta get to signing, I'll see you on Friday.

P.S. One more thing, I need your help deciding which Sharpie colors to use.  There is a survey in the Doobly-Doo.  Thank you, bye.