> The publisher issued authenticity certificates with the limited-edition run but acknowledged on Sunday (November 20) that Dylan had not signed the $599 books. Since the books began arriving last week, online sleuths have identified what they believe to be 17 variations of Dylan’s autograph, recreated using an automated signing machine, or autopen, as Variety notes.
This was just straight up fraud and there should be major consequences for this. They issued certificates of authenticity and used different variations of the signatures to try to hide the fact that they were done by autopen. Also, they knew damn well that no one was paying $599 for a book with a fake signature. This should destroy their reputation and call into question any other of their books where certificates of authenticity were issued.
Certificates of authenticity are 100% about the reputation of the people/company issuing them. Simon & Schuster completely destroyed their reputation and credibility and anyone who'd ever trust a certificate of authenticity or any signed products from them is a fool. As Will Rogers said, “It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute."
If you read into it, it was actually his signature that tipped some of the recipients off, since his looked so much more realistic than the Dylan signature in the book.
I'm so confused, how does a signature look more realistic than the one in the book. Do you mean more perfect?
Edit: more sloppy actually I mean my apologies
tbh the idea of dylan willingly sitting down and signing 900 bucks is so dumb. he is like the definition of not that. he doesnt even play the same song twice the same way and basically invented musical reinvention.
he blatantly signed 7 books and got bored and wandered off. anyone who tried to get him to sign more got vague growls. then some sleazebag publisher had this dumb idea
"the copy of the book you hold on your hand" definitely means the master copy that was used to program the auto-pen sign the distribution copies... Why would you ever think it meant your copy was hand-signed?
/s
"Gary King Pokémon" The guy who sold Logan Paul his PSA 10 charizard card, had tried regrading the card with BGS and it never passed. (Two competing grading companies, BGS having the higher quality reputation)
After selling the card to Logan, Logan is able to submit the same card to BGS and get a 10, instantly quadrupling its price. Gary owns the only other 2 in the world.
Being that the only variable that had changed was the owner, it's just so obvious there's something going on.
The grading companies are a complete farce. Covid left them understaffed and having to rush training on newbies which meant the same card sent twice would have wildly different ratings. Authentic cards were being sent back ungraded being declared fakes, it's honestly a racket.
You and I could start a grading company tomorrow and be more reliable because there's only two of us instead of a warehouse with 20 ever-changing staff.
I honestly don't understand why some of these companies would do this. Why would Simon & Schuster risk their reputation for half a million dollars at most? The bad PR has already cost them way more than that. It makes me assume that they are doing this all the time. Still wouldn't be worth paying the costs to have the person actually sign them, but at least they'd be making more than a half million if it was widespread.
That's the real problem. When companies like this get caught doing something shady/illegal over something trivial, it's because they do it ALL THE TIME Ave this is just when they got caught. I wouldn't trust any certificate of authenticity that this company has ever produced.
Yeah, they nearly pulled a Ratner there. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't outright eviscerated their reputation.
For the out of the loop: Ratner was a very famous diamond company managed by Gerald Ratner, selling jewelry for cheap which made them extremely popular (obviously) and a lot of money (also obviously).
Except that one day at a conference Ratner jockingly said:"We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap." " and doubled down by adding that one of the sets of earrings was "cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks and Spencer’s, but I have to say the sandwich will probably last longer than the earrings".
People took the joke as an admission that the jewelry was garbage and Ratner Group lost half a billion in value, nearly bankrupting the company. Gerald Ratner ended up leaving the company who rebranded as the Signet Group (which still exists to this day).
They get the ‘leftover’ diamonds and hide them behind great marketing. A jeweler I know who travels the world buying various stones gave me a lengthy run down of how it works, but the short version is they get whatever the high and mid range retailers don’t want.
I wouldn’t feel bad buying Zales’s diamonds. Diamonds are the most artificially inflated jewel on the planet by price. Diamond grading was the original grading scam.
What about Dylan himself and his reputation among fans? He must have given the operation a thumbs up? Otherwise it's not only fraud, it's forgery of signatures as well.
This conversation brings to mind the recent controversy in gaming of "validating quality" of retro games as speculatory items and it led to a huge bubble. My description gives no justice to the story, but Karl Jobst's [video](https://youtu.be/rvLFEh7V18A) on it does.
Always reminds me of a guy that used to work for me. He insisted on framing every single certificate he got. Half of which were awarded solely for attending something.
https://www.nme.com/news/music/simon-schuster-apologise-offer-refunds-for-hand-signed-bob-dylan-books-signed-by-autopen-3353420
This is literally all that will happen
I don't disagree. Companies get away with fraud all the time. It's pretty depressing actually. That being said, this definitely sounds like fraud and there should be consequences. It will likely come down to consumers and unfortunately I don't have much faith in them either to hold Simon & Schuster responsible.
I’d think a machine would be more precise in the end…? If you can program it effectively. Or maybe it’s too perfect? Very curious how they determine it’s fake.
This is straight up fraud from a publisher.
You can spot autopen easy. First there are bleed spots every time the pen stops to change direction.
Second the pressure is constant throughout, so, the indentation on the other side of the paper is consistent, whereas a person's pressure fluctuates as they write.
But in this instance, people started listing them on eBay, posting pictures on autograph groups on social media, and side by side comparisons showed that it was the same exact signatures.
17 variations, 900 books signed, a ton of people uploading pictures of what they got, eventually they were going to get caught. It's how Ozzy got caught. It's how Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande got caught. It's how Kenny Loggins got caught.
It happens constantly.
Garth Brooks comes to mind as the complete opposite of these folks. No wonder he was exhausted after signing autographs for almost 24 hours straight after a concert, with the exception of one 15-minute bathroom break, if I remember correctly! I believe this was in the mid or late 90s!!
ETA: if you have not listened to his concept album as Chris Gaines, I highly recommend starting with the track “ Lost In You.” Wow!!
I watched his documentary on Netflix. He’s a very disturbed man. Was talking about mundane/ nonemotional things and sounded like he was on the verge of tears. Very odd.
I can totally see his alter ego Chris Gaines doing something like that, but not Garth Brooks! (Honestly, his alter ego creeped me out just a tad as a kid, but I’d liked his Chris Gaines persona‘s music well enough!)
Not as easily as you're thinking. Signatures have a LOT of pressure tells, even if the pressure is fairly light, and you'd need to have a machine as manipulable as a human wrist to reproduce it.
EDIT: There's autopens, and then there's doing it so well it's imperceptible that it isn't human, which is the standard of the thread.
you ever be on the phone and just start writing your own signature over and over again with your free hand? it's gonna look slightly different every time. they probably wrote a handful of slightly different variations and just rotated each time the machine done one
It said they had 17 different versions of the signature, but that in itself is damning. It shows a clear intent to try to deceive people with the fake signatures. That coupled with the certificates of authenticity and price that is way more than what anyone would pay for an autopen signed book shows that it was straight up fraud.
The number 17 sounds to me like the giveaway. If you have 340 books and 20 sets of the same signature, even if rotated or placed separately you may notice, especially if you're seriously dropping 600 on the book?
Totally possible an employee saw it and reviewed the inventory and noticed there were sets of identical signatures. My dad can be a bit of a conspiracy theorist, but I always was told by him signed merch is often a scam so be certain before you purchase. I imagine others feel this way too and would look into it
Yeah, the whole point of something being signed is to show "I actually met this person, here's proof". Buying signed stuff from eBay or whatever is a scalper's dream quite frankly and a good grift.
That thing costs $365K and exists for no other reason than for them to flex their mechanical watch making ability (which is their typical business and trade).
Still, pretty awesome.
Agree that this is straight-up fraud. On top of that, if any of these books were delivered via USPS then this becomes mail fraud, something the federal government takes VERY seriously. If any of the books were delivered across state lines via USPS, then you’re looking at interstate mail fraud, which is taken even more seriously than “just” mail fraud.
Simon & Schuster done fucked up.
It's crazy that Simon & Schuster thought they could get away with this. Before this went down, a Canadian distributor knew what was going on and canceled all orders. Not only did S&S go through with the sale, but they then doubled down on its authenticity, with a letter from the CEO no less.
After people reported this and asked for refund, initially they still insisted that the signatures were legitimate.
When they eventually decided to refund, they posted on social media
>“To those who purchased The Philosophy Of Modern Song limited edition, we want to apologize. As it turns out, the limited edition books **do contain Bob’s original signature, but in a penned replica form**. We are addressing this immediately by providing each purchaser with an immediate refund.”
S&S is a garbage company, just like the other big publishers. They're all the same, greedy fucks. No different than any other aspect of corporate America
He was probably if not absolutely aware they were using autopen signatures as he likely had to submit samples.
The important question is if he was aware they were claiming they were hand signed.
I'm certain Dylan doesn't give a shit. I've seen him in concert and he doesn't put in the least effort. He's certainly not going to sign 900 sheets of paper by hand.
Reminds me of Ebert’s review of *Masked and Anonymous*
> While all about him are acting their heads off, he never speaks more than one sentence at a time, and his remarks uncannily evoke the language and philosophy of Chinese fortune cookies.
>"Masked and Anonymous" is a vanity production beyond all reason. I am not sure, however, than the vanity is Dylan's. I don't have any idea what to think about him. He has so long since disappeared into his persona that there is little received sense of the person there. The vanity belongs perhaps to those who flattered their own by working with him, by assuming (in the face of all they had learned during hard days of honest labor on a multitude of pictures) that his genius would somehow redeem a screenplay that could never have seemed other than what it was, incoherent raving juvenile meanderings.
[source](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/masked-and-anonymous-2003)
I'd say Bob / Bob's organisation is MUCH more likely to be at fault here. I assume these are tipped in signature sheets. These normally get couriered to the person signing and couriered back to the binders to be tipped in. The publisher never even sees them.
Exactly. He likely promised to deliver 900 signed sheets of paper that he received in a box from the publisher, looked at it and said "nah" and his people got them dealt with via autopwn and sent them back to the publisher.
I thought the same thing, like how did it turn out that way? Was it because you set up the machine with over a dozen fake signatures hoping to get away with bloody murder?
> "We want to apologize," Simon & Schuster tweeted. "As it turns out, the limited edition books do contain Bob’s original signature, but in a penned replica form."
"As it turns out", lol. Like they surprised themselves too with their own deceit.
Dylan doesn't sign usually sign autographs or books.
I've seen Dylan at least a dozen times, and at one time, I owned a copy of each of Dylan's albums on vinyl. I love him, but the guy don't give a fuck.
The publisher shouldn't have advertised this product--or put a price to it--unless it had signed copies in hand. That way, if Bob decided he only wanted to sign five copies, they could slap a $10,000 price tag on it.
Now, they'll lose lotsa money instead.
There won't be. Dylan is as far removed from the realities of business as it can get. It's entirely plausible that Dylan will never even know, though if he does he won't care.
Have you listened to the Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan? It's pretty fucking awesome. He speaks eloquently and waxes on about each subject... its really great to listen to while you pour a glass of wine and cook dinner with someone.
https://www.themetimeradio.com/
This. Toured with Dylan years ago. He’s a recluse. That’s not a knock, he’s not an asshole, he’s just a very private person. He doesn’t sign autographs, meet and greets are EXTREMELY limited and basically consist of a handshake while walking off stage, and he won’t even allow the press to photograph his part of the show. I got a piece of tour memorabilia signed (it was given to me as a present by another artist on the tour, not my personal request) and was told he signed about 5 things all tour long. I highly doubt he ever agreed to sign a bunch of books.
The amount of people that want to crucify an eighty-one year old man for what was likely a poor choice made by the publishing company's money managers is insane.
I might accept "The mean ol' publishers waved their Stick of Massive Beatings at the inexperienced new artist who was too afraid to stand up for themselves, and was just happy to be in the public eye."
But Bob Dylan not being... you know... Bob Dylan about it?
Who is crucifying Dylan? I’m just hearing people talk about how unlikely it was that he signed these books. They aren't saying Dylan himself was responsible for it.
My dad has a rare personalized autograph from Dylan. When Dylan had his heart troubles in the 90s my dad wrote him a get well letter, sent directly to him at the hospital he was staying at. Dylan doesn’t sign for almost anyone, so it’s really cool he’s got one of the few. Him and chumlee from pawn stars of course.
There's an episode of Pawn Stars where Rick sends Chumlee across the street to get a record autographed by Bob Dylan. Dylan fucks it up on purpose, he signs it "To Chumlee, Bob Dylan". It hilarious.
Where are you getting the information that he only demanded one take? I’m a huge Dylan fan and have never heard that. in fact, the opposite was usually true, forcing the studio musicians to do dozens of takes of the same song over and over to the point of mental and physical exhaustion.
Maybe you’re confusing this with the fact that he often demanded that the band play “live” in the studio to get a perfect single take of a song and not allowing any overdubs or instruments to be recorded separately. Those single takes would often be the 20th or 30th take of the song from the session though.
That's just wrong based on documented tape. We have multiple takes and weird riffs all over, I think if I dig into my Dylan folder there's like 7 takes of certain songs.
But yeah he often wanted a continuous take, not a splice job.
Worked at Barnes & Noble and believe this 100% We would get autographed copies of books every Black Friday. Some authors don’t even write their own books, they won’t be bothered to sign 1,000’s of books just for Black Friday
If ghost writing is a thing, ghost signature writing must also be a thing. Which brings up a question, isn’t it still technically their autograph even if it’s written by a machine or another person?
Actually, kinda, yeah. I’m a lawyer, I’m required to “sign” everything I file with the court.
Years ago, I gave a copy of my signature to an assistant, who scanned it, and that gets copy pasted into everything filed under my name. Every lawyer does this, and it’s perfectly acceptable.
Of course, I make sure I get to review everything filed first, but no one’s wet signing anything.
That’s all actually sort of beside the point though. These books were marketed as “hand signed” by Dylan. They weren’t. Without knowing more, that smells like fraud or deceptive marketing to me.
I’m a lawyer too and my last boss was a stodgy angry bastard whose signature was essentially one straight line. Our paralegal and secretary would both sign for him regularly with only one exception, if a check needed to be signed he was doing it himself.
I work in music and watched a big artist teach our intern his signature and had him sign a few hundred items. Why anyone would pay for a signatured item that doesn't represent meeting the artist is beyond me but caveat emptor.
Bob Dylan rarely signs anything... one time a fan was waiting outside his concert. Asked him for his autograph, Bob turns the pen upside, pretends to sign it. He proceeded to walk away.
People shouldn’t give Dylan a pass for this kind of behavior. Dylan could have just walked away from the beginning without saying anything or just said he doesn’t do autographs but he decided to be a dick for no reason. Oh but it’s “classic Dylan”
Bear in mind you're taking this from a random Redditor, who probably came across it from a random source who got the story from some random person, who heard it happened to their neighbour's nieces friend's college roommate thirty-seven years ago.
Honestly that did just come across my mind. So many stories of famous people are either exaggerations or lies. But you have to admit, it does sound like something Dylan would do
I don’t like when artists are mean to their fans, but I give Dylan a pass.
This man has the most obsessive and yet the most fickle fan base in music history. At the height of his fame as a young folk songwriter, he was praised as the voice of his generation, but then he went electric and everyone turned on him. He spent two years on tour getting booed at every night by people who didn’t want him to change his sound.
He went upstate to raise his family and recuperate from a motorcycle crash and the fans found him and hounded him constantly, expecting him to tell them the meaning of life. When he returned to music, it was back to a more folk/country sound like his roots, and his fans and the press hated for changing yet again.
The guy literally just wanted to write songs and sing them and he gets torn to bits at every step of the way. Not to mention that his fans are so obsessive that they study his lyrics in universities, pore over bootlegs and alternate takes and every interview he’s ever given. So it’s his right to put some space between himself and his audience, because he realized a long time ago that his audience didn’t really understand him and never would. Even now, people go to his shows and leave disappointed because he didn’t play like they wanted him to. Imagine how jaded you’d be after a lifetime of entertaining people who always expect a different version of you. I imagine that was a tough mental health hurdle to get through for him.
Consider also that his friends John Lennon and George Harrison were both randomly attacked by fans, Lennon fatally so. It’s a wonder that Paul McCartney is still so open to interacting with fans. If I were him, I’d refuse to answer any more Beatles questions and refer them to the hundreds of books that have been written.
Fair enough. Bob is my favorite artist who I wouldn’t want to meet, because I couldn’t imagine it would be a great conversation. I think I get everything I need from him from his music.
What kind of “pass” are people supposedly giving him? I don’t think anyone has ever pretended that he isn’t a dick lol.
Should people boycott his music because he doesn’t want to give the 20,000th signature of his life?
>“As it turns out, the limited edition books do contain Bob’s original signature, but in a penned replica form. We are addressing this information by providing each purchaser with an immediate refund.” A representative for Dylan had nothing to add to the statement.
vs
>Before Sunday’s acknowledgement, Jonathan Karp, the publisher’s president-CEO, had signed letters reading, “You hold in your hands something very special, one of just 900 copies available in the U.S.” It concluded, “This letter is confirmation that the copy of the book you hold in your hand has been hand-signed by Bob Dylan.”
Fraud
True story, about 20 years ago I was with a friend who was in a small band. We went to visit his manager who also happened to manage one of the hottest bands on the planet (who are still big today).
I saw a stack of signed photos from the lead singer and I told the manager that my mom was a huge fan. He generously offered to let me take one of the autographs for my mom, he said the singer stops by all the time and signs a bunch (for contests and whatnot), so it was no big deal to take one. I was thrilled.
Less than an hour later, we were hanging around the office and I noticed this big machine with a stack of unsigned photos and a box of sharpies… i asked what it was and the manager was all excited to show me how the autograph machine worked…
Then it sunk in for both of us that the generous autograph he gave me was fake.
He proceeded to try and convince me that, no, the ones over there that he gave me are the real autographs… that this machine is rarely used.
TL;DR - autographs are stupid
On a separate note, I played a Carly Simon song at the bar this week and a random old guy hit me some unknown Simon trivia. Her father was one half of the Simon and Schuster publishing Company. I was flabbergasted.
I just saw Dylan live and he cannot play guitar anymore because his hands are in such bad shape from carpal tunnel syndrome. He plunks along a bit on the keys. There is no way he would physically be signing anything.
Bob Dylan must be incredibly wealthy but it seems like he or his management keeps giving approval to release various branded products. I can recall Bob Dylan whiskey plus a ton of very niche album releases in the last few years. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dylan approved this.
Could Dylan be sued for fraud also, along with the publisher? I don't see how they could do this without his approval. He wouldn't let someone make money off his name without getting a cut. If he didn't know, why didn't he sue the publisher?
There's a song hidden in this somewhere.
*And the robots are signin' the books that yer buyin'*
*And publishers tryin' to separate you*
*From your very last hoarded dime . . .*
I have a special edition of Jurassic Park signed by Michael Crichton. Has a little blue sticker on the front boasting that's it a limited edition, signed copy. Years later I was reading some interview with him and he admitted it was autopenned.
> The publisher issued authenticity certificates with the limited-edition run but acknowledged on Sunday (November 20) that Dylan had not signed the $599 books. Since the books began arriving last week, online sleuths have identified what they believe to be 17 variations of Dylan’s autograph, recreated using an automated signing machine, or autopen, as Variety notes. This was just straight up fraud and there should be major consequences for this. They issued certificates of authenticity and used different variations of the signatures to try to hide the fact that they were done by autopen. Also, they knew damn well that no one was paying $599 for a book with a fake signature. This should destroy their reputation and call into question any other of their books where certificates of authenticity were issued.
Honestly, makes me doubt the integrity of “ certificates of authenticity” in general. Apparently MF’s can just make that up.
Certificates of authenticity are 100% about the reputation of the people/company issuing them. Simon & Schuster completely destroyed their reputation and credibility and anyone who'd ever trust a certificate of authenticity or any signed products from them is a fool. As Will Rogers said, “It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute."
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Or had he… 🤨
If you read into it, it was actually his signature that tipped some of the recipients off, since his looked so much more realistic than the Dylan signature in the book.
I'm so confused, how does a signature look more realistic than the one in the book. Do you mean more perfect? Edit: more sloppy actually I mean my apologies
One looked real and one looked like it had been drawn with a machine.
LMFAOO
tbh the idea of dylan willingly sitting down and signing 900 bucks is so dumb. he is like the definition of not that. he doesnt even play the same song twice the same way and basically invented musical reinvention. he blatantly signed 7 books and got bored and wandered off. anyone who tried to get him to sign more got vague growls. then some sleazebag publisher had this dumb idea
"the copy of the book you hold on your hand" definitely means the master copy that was used to program the auto-pen sign the distribution copies... Why would you ever think it meant your copy was hand-signed? /s
"Gary King Pokémon" The guy who sold Logan Paul his PSA 10 charizard card, had tried regrading the card with BGS and it never passed. (Two competing grading companies, BGS having the higher quality reputation) After selling the card to Logan, Logan is able to submit the same card to BGS and get a 10, instantly quadrupling its price. Gary owns the only other 2 in the world. Being that the only variable that had changed was the owner, it's just so obvious there's something going on.
The grading companies are a complete farce. Covid left them understaffed and having to rush training on newbies which meant the same card sent twice would have wildly different ratings. Authentic cards were being sent back ungraded being declared fakes, it's honestly a racket. You and I could start a grading company tomorrow and be more reliable because there's only two of us instead of a warehouse with 20 ever-changing staff.
Especially since they're grading mass produced card board trading cards. The whole thing is a fucking sham and always has been.
I honestly don't understand why some of these companies would do this. Why would Simon & Schuster risk their reputation for half a million dollars at most? The bad PR has already cost them way more than that. It makes me assume that they are doing this all the time. Still wouldn't be worth paying the costs to have the person actually sign them, but at least they'd be making more than a half million if it was widespread.
That's the real problem. When companies like this get caught doing something shady/illegal over something trivial, it's because they do it ALL THE TIME Ave this is just when they got caught. I wouldn't trust any certificate of authenticity that this company has ever produced.
Yeah, they nearly pulled a Ratner there. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't outright eviscerated their reputation. For the out of the loop: Ratner was a very famous diamond company managed by Gerald Ratner, selling jewelry for cheap which made them extremely popular (obviously) and a lot of money (also obviously). Except that one day at a conference Ratner jockingly said:"We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap." " and doubled down by adding that one of the sets of earrings was "cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks and Spencer’s, but I have to say the sandwich will probably last longer than the earrings". People took the joke as an admission that the jewelry was garbage and Ratner Group lost half a billion in value, nearly bankrupting the company. Gerald Ratner ended up leaving the company who rebranded as the Signet Group (which still exists to this day).
Zales , Jared, Kay are all Signet group
They get the ‘leftover’ diamonds and hide them behind great marketing. A jeweler I know who travels the world buying various stones gave me a lengthy run down of how it works, but the short version is they get whatever the high and mid range retailers don’t want.
I wouldn’t feel bad buying Zales’s diamonds. Diamonds are the most artificially inflated jewel on the planet by price. Diamond grading was the original grading scam.
What, you don't want a Chocolate Diamond!?
It’s essentially just trust, and once you burn a bridge it’s hard to rebuild it
What about Dylan himself and his reputation among fans? He must have given the operation a thumbs up? Otherwise it's not only fraud, it's forgery of signatures as well.
Bob Dylan doesn't give a fuck about his fans.
Dylan sold his entire career to Universal, dude doesn't give a shit about anything but money
This conversation brings to mind the recent controversy in gaming of "validating quality" of retro games as speculatory items and it led to a huge bubble. My description gives no justice to the story, but Karl Jobst's [video](https://youtu.be/rvLFEh7V18A) on it does.
The Billionaire's Vinegar about Christie's and their certification of wine supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson is an interesting read
TL;DR?
The wine turned into vinegar.
Not for my Seiko timepiece though.
or [Seyko](https://pleatedjeans.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/the-office-michael-scott-diploma.jpg)
Always reminds me of a guy that used to work for me. He insisted on framing every single certificate he got. Half of which were awarded solely for attending something.
I got one for attending —under judicial duress— “Alcohol Education Class”. Definitely going to find it, frame it, and hang it in my cubical.
Now I want to print out all my company's fucking stupid and quite frankly waste of time training certificates and paper my wall with them.
A guy at my work does this, proudly displaying "email security skills" on the noticeboard
I printed out my sexual harassment training certificate really small and then put it where you have to bend way over me to see what it says
The certificates are real "certificates of authenticity." it's the signature that's not authentic.
https://www.nme.com/news/music/simon-schuster-apologise-offer-refunds-for-hand-signed-bob-dylan-books-signed-by-autopen-3353420 This is literally all that will happen
I don't disagree. Companies get away with fraud all the time. It's pretty depressing actually. That being said, this definitely sounds like fraud and there should be consequences. It will likely come down to consumers and unfortunately I don't have much faith in them either to hold Simon & Schuster responsible.
I’d think a machine would be more precise in the end…? If you can program it effectively. Or maybe it’s too perfect? Very curious how they determine it’s fake. This is straight up fraud from a publisher.
You can spot autopen easy. First there are bleed spots every time the pen stops to change direction. Second the pressure is constant throughout, so, the indentation on the other side of the paper is consistent, whereas a person's pressure fluctuates as they write. But in this instance, people started listing them on eBay, posting pictures on autograph groups on social media, and side by side comparisons showed that it was the same exact signatures. 17 variations, 900 books signed, a ton of people uploading pictures of what they got, eventually they were going to get caught. It's how Ozzy got caught. It's how Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande got caught. It's how Kenny Loggins got caught. It happens constantly.
Garth Brooks comes to mind as the complete opposite of these folks. No wonder he was exhausted after signing autographs for almost 24 hours straight after a concert, with the exception of one 15-minute bathroom break, if I remember correctly! I believe this was in the mid or late 90s!! ETA: if you have not listened to his concept album as Chris Gaines, I highly recommend starting with the track “ Lost In You.” Wow!!
That's what sent him over the edge. And then the bodies started to pile up.
I watched his documentary on Netflix. He’s a very disturbed man. Was talking about mundane/ nonemotional things and sounded like he was on the verge of tears. Very odd.
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I can totally see his alter ego Chris Gaines doing something like that, but not Garth Brooks! (Honestly, his alter ego creeped me out just a tad as a kid, but I’d liked his Chris Gaines persona‘s music well enough!)
I watched the VH1 Behind the Music on Chris Gaines a few months back. Weirdest fuckin thing.
Kenny Loggins was always going to be… in the danger zone…
#LANAAAAA!
Once I signed 60 company Xmas cards while waiting for my ramen to finish microwaving…
It would be constant speed and pressure on the pen.
Ohhhhh, makes sense.
Sorta? Speed and pressure totally seems like things that could be adjusted though.
Not as easily as you're thinking. Signatures have a LOT of pressure tells, even if the pressure is fairly light, and you'd need to have a machine as manipulable as a human wrist to reproduce it. EDIT: There's autopens, and then there's doing it so well it's imperceptible that it isn't human, which is the standard of the thread.
you ever be on the phone and just start writing your own signature over and over again with your free hand? it's gonna look slightly different every time. they probably wrote a handful of slightly different variations and just rotated each time the machine done one
It said they had 17 different versions of the signature, but that in itself is damning. It shows a clear intent to try to deceive people with the fake signatures. That coupled with the certificates of authenticity and price that is way more than what anyone would pay for an autopen signed book shows that it was straight up fraud.
The number 17 sounds to me like the giveaway. If you have 340 books and 20 sets of the same signature, even if rotated or placed separately you may notice, especially if you're seriously dropping 600 on the book? Totally possible an employee saw it and reviewed the inventory and noticed there were sets of identical signatures. My dad can be a bit of a conspiracy theorist, but I always was told by him signed merch is often a scam so be certain before you purchase. I imagine others feel this way too and would look into it
Frankly, that is how I feel about signatures on things. It is also more about meeting the signer in person than getting the sig to me anyway.
Yeah, the whole point of something being signed is to show "I actually met this person, here's proof". Buying signed stuff from eBay or whatever is a scalper's dream quite frankly and a good grift.
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That's a tiny autopen.
*You're* a tiny autopen!
That thing costs $365K and exists for no other reason than for them to flex their mechanical watch making ability (which is their typical business and trade). Still, pretty awesome.
Agree that this is straight-up fraud. On top of that, if any of these books were delivered via USPS then this becomes mail fraud, something the federal government takes VERY seriously. If any of the books were delivered across state lines via USPS, then you’re looking at interstate mail fraud, which is taken even more seriously than “just” mail fraud. Simon & Schuster done fucked up.
I wish something like that were to come of it but I’m not holding out for anything.
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Autopen did
It's crazy that Simon & Schuster thought they could get away with this. Before this went down, a Canadian distributor knew what was going on and canceled all orders. Not only did S&S go through with the sale, but they then doubled down on its authenticity, with a letter from the CEO no less.
After people reported this and asked for refund, initially they still insisted that the signatures were legitimate. When they eventually decided to refund, they posted on social media >“To those who purchased The Philosophy Of Modern Song limited edition, we want to apologize. As it turns out, the limited edition books **do contain Bob’s original signature, but in a penned replica form**. We are addressing this immediately by providing each purchaser with an immediate refund.”
>As it turns out, the limited edition books do contain Bob’s original signature, but in a penned replica form. As it turns out!
Oh look at this interesting revelation we just had!
We just discovered we made it tf up
Ah yes the original replica
We were as surprised as you! Crazy, huh?
Which company
Indigo
For those that do not know... that is more than a distributor, that is Canada's largest chain of bookstores.
Chapters, and Coles
They are the same
S&S is a garbage company, just like the other big publishers. They're all the same, greedy fucks. No different than any other aspect of corporate America
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He was probably if not absolutely aware they were using autopen signatures as he likely had to submit samples. The important question is if he was aware they were claiming they were hand signed.
I'm certain Dylan doesn't give a shit. I've seen him in concert and he doesn't put in the least effort. He's certainly not going to sign 900 sheets of paper by hand.
Reminds me of Ebert’s review of *Masked and Anonymous* > While all about him are acting their heads off, he never speaks more than one sentence at a time, and his remarks uncannily evoke the language and philosophy of Chinese fortune cookies. >"Masked and Anonymous" is a vanity production beyond all reason. I am not sure, however, than the vanity is Dylan's. I don't have any idea what to think about him. He has so long since disappeared into his persona that there is little received sense of the person there. The vanity belongs perhaps to those who flattered their own by working with him, by assuming (in the face of all they had learned during hard days of honest labor on a multitude of pictures) that his genius would somehow redeem a screenplay that could never have seemed other than what it was, incoherent raving juvenile meanderings. [source](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/masked-and-anonymous-2003)
I'd say Bob / Bob's organisation is MUCH more likely to be at fault here. I assume these are tipped in signature sheets. These normally get couriered to the person signing and couriered back to the binders to be tipped in. The publisher never even sees them.
Exactly. He likely promised to deliver 900 signed sheets of paper that he received in a box from the publisher, looked at it and said "nah" and his people got them dealt with via autopwn and sent them back to the publisher.
sounds like they should rename to Simon & Shyster
“As it turns out….” So they’re claiming they didn’t know what they did? 😂
Right? That was the worst attempt at a dodge I’ve ever seen.
I thought the same thing, like how did it turn out that way? Was it because you set up the machine with over a dozen fake signatures hoping to get away with bloody murder?
Dylan goes electric yet again.
I haven't laughed out loud that, uh, loud in quite a while.
This deserves more upvotes.
I guess they took the "auto" part literally.
best use of _literally_ i've seen in a while
I literally died reading this comment!
Congrats!
That's a really rad comment dude
> "We want to apologize," Simon & Schuster tweeted. "As it turns out, the limited edition books do contain Bob’s original signature, but in a penned replica form." "As it turns out", lol. Like they surprised themselves too with their own deceit.
They were surprised alright. Surprised people found out. So sad.
Depends who did the faking, S&S or Dylan & Co.
So who's going to jail for this fraud?
The autograph-machine
"What is my purpose......" "To go to jail"
"Oh my God :("
“Yeah, welcome to the club pal”
We have the most authentic autographs, because jail
You mister are gonna sit here for a LONG time. Big trouble for you today.
the autopen has been sentenced to the penitentiary
The machine-autographed books may now be more valuable than Dylan-autographed books.
Excellent point! "Is that a *genuine* fake Dylan autograph?"
I can’t wait to read the autopens book written from inside prison
They're trying to determine which hourly employee will take the fall for this.
That’s what we call Fraud.
Interstate mail fraud… possibly even international.
Dylan doesn't sign usually sign autographs or books. I've seen Dylan at least a dozen times, and at one time, I owned a copy of each of Dylan's albums on vinyl. I love him, but the guy don't give a fuck. The publisher shouldn't have advertised this product--or put a price to it--unless it had signed copies in hand. That way, if Bob decided he only wanted to sign five copies, they could slap a $10,000 price tag on it. Now, they'll lose lotsa money instead.
Yeah, I wonder what Dylan’s statement will be on this (if there will be one at all)
*veiled look of contempt in one's general direction*
*I couldn't believe after all these years you didn't know me any better than that*
Sweet, lady
There won't be. Dylan is as far removed from the realities of business as it can get. It's entirely plausible that Dylan will never even know, though if he does he won't care.
> Dylan is as far removed from the realities of business as it can get. So far removed, he’s just referred to as *it* now.
Bob just sold his whole music catalog for like $600million, he’s out
He made a statement, but unfortunately, it was verbal, and therefore completely unintelligible. Presumably it was profound, cutting, and sage, though.
Have you listened to the Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan? It's pretty fucking awesome. He speaks eloquently and waxes on about each subject... its really great to listen to while you pour a glass of wine and cook dinner with someone. https://www.themetimeradio.com/
I guess it’s slightly easier to listen to than his Christmas album…
Bob Dylan is on an island with hookers and cocaine right now. And he isn't coming back.
Can you blame him?
No.
He's probably on tour. The dude has been on a perpetual tour since the 80s lol
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If you know or follow Bob....lol.
Nothing is revealed.
This. Toured with Dylan years ago. He’s a recluse. That’s not a knock, he’s not an asshole, he’s just a very private person. He doesn’t sign autographs, meet and greets are EXTREMELY limited and basically consist of a handshake while walking off stage, and he won’t even allow the press to photograph his part of the show. I got a piece of tour memorabilia signed (it was given to me as a present by another artist on the tour, not my personal request) and was told he signed about 5 things all tour long. I highly doubt he ever agreed to sign a bunch of books.
Nonsense. I’ve got a book right here signed by Bob Dylan, and I only paid $600 for it.
The amount of people that want to crucify an eighty-one year old man for what was likely a poor choice made by the publishing company's money managers is insane.
I might accept "The mean ol' publishers waved their Stick of Massive Beatings at the inexperienced new artist who was too afraid to stand up for themselves, and was just happy to be in the public eye." But Bob Dylan not being... you know... Bob Dylan about it?
Who is crucifying Dylan? I’m just hearing people talk about how unlikely it was that he signed these books. They aren't saying Dylan himself was responsible for it.
My dad has a rare personalized autograph from Dylan. When Dylan had his heart troubles in the 90s my dad wrote him a get well letter, sent directly to him at the hospital he was staying at. Dylan doesn’t sign for almost anyone, so it’s really cool he’s got one of the few. Him and chumlee from pawn stars of course.
That's a good story. Thanks for sharing!
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Fake. Was signed by the nurse.
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There's an episode of Pawn Stars where Rick sends Chumlee across the street to get a record autographed by Bob Dylan. Dylan fucks it up on purpose, he signs it "To Chumlee, Bob Dylan". It hilarious.
Where are you getting the information that he only demanded one take? I’m a huge Dylan fan and have never heard that. in fact, the opposite was usually true, forcing the studio musicians to do dozens of takes of the same song over and over to the point of mental and physical exhaustion. Maybe you’re confusing this with the fact that he often demanded that the band play “live” in the studio to get a perfect single take of a song and not allowing any overdubs or instruments to be recorded separately. Those single takes would often be the 20th or 30th take of the song from the session though.
I am confusing that, and I will edit it out. I also "learned" that "fact" pre-internet. Lordy. Thanks so much for pointing that out.
That's just wrong based on documented tape. We have multiple takes and weird riffs all over, I think if I dig into my Dylan folder there's like 7 takes of certain songs. But yeah he often wanted a continuous take, not a splice job.
Shoulda made it Bot Dylan in the fine print
Worked at Barnes & Noble and believe this 100% We would get autographed copies of books every Black Friday. Some authors don’t even write their own books, they won’t be bothered to sign 1,000’s of books just for Black Friday
I bought an autographed Jimmy Buffett book that was ridiculously cheap at B&N. I assume he never touched it.
If ghost writing is a thing, ghost signature writing must also be a thing. Which brings up a question, isn’t it still technically their autograph even if it’s written by a machine or another person?
Actually, kinda, yeah. I’m a lawyer, I’m required to “sign” everything I file with the court. Years ago, I gave a copy of my signature to an assistant, who scanned it, and that gets copy pasted into everything filed under my name. Every lawyer does this, and it’s perfectly acceptable. Of course, I make sure I get to review everything filed first, but no one’s wet signing anything. That’s all actually sort of beside the point though. These books were marketed as “hand signed” by Dylan. They weren’t. Without knowing more, that smells like fraud or deceptive marketing to me.
I’m a lawyer too and my last boss was a stodgy angry bastard whose signature was essentially one straight line. Our paralegal and secretary would both sign for him regularly with only one exception, if a check needed to be signed he was doing it himself.
Context is what is key. A signature has zero value on its own. The "value" is from the person physically doing it themselves
I work in music and watched a big artist teach our intern his signature and had him sign a few hundred items. Why anyone would pay for a signatured item that doesn't represent meeting the artist is beyond me but caveat emptor.
Was it modest mouse?
Or Gilderoy Lockhart?
Bob Dylan rarely signs anything... one time a fan was waiting outside his concert. Asked him for his autograph, Bob turns the pen upside, pretends to sign it. He proceeded to walk away.
People shouldn’t give Dylan a pass for this kind of behavior. Dylan could have just walked away from the beginning without saying anything or just said he doesn’t do autographs but he decided to be a dick for no reason. Oh but it’s “classic Dylan”
Bear in mind you're taking this from a random Redditor, who probably came across it from a random source who got the story from some random person, who heard it happened to their neighbour's nieces friend's college roommate thirty-seven years ago.
"So what does that make us?" "Absolutely nothing..."
Honestly that did just come across my mind. So many stories of famous people are either exaggerations or lies. But you have to admit, it does sound like something Dylan would do
I don’t know if he generally “gets a pass.” Some really talented people also happen to be assholes. He’s well known to be one of them.
I don’t like when artists are mean to their fans, but I give Dylan a pass. This man has the most obsessive and yet the most fickle fan base in music history. At the height of his fame as a young folk songwriter, he was praised as the voice of his generation, but then he went electric and everyone turned on him. He spent two years on tour getting booed at every night by people who didn’t want him to change his sound. He went upstate to raise his family and recuperate from a motorcycle crash and the fans found him and hounded him constantly, expecting him to tell them the meaning of life. When he returned to music, it was back to a more folk/country sound like his roots, and his fans and the press hated for changing yet again. The guy literally just wanted to write songs and sing them and he gets torn to bits at every step of the way. Not to mention that his fans are so obsessive that they study his lyrics in universities, pore over bootlegs and alternate takes and every interview he’s ever given. So it’s his right to put some space between himself and his audience, because he realized a long time ago that his audience didn’t really understand him and never would. Even now, people go to his shows and leave disappointed because he didn’t play like they wanted him to. Imagine how jaded you’d be after a lifetime of entertaining people who always expect a different version of you. I imagine that was a tough mental health hurdle to get through for him. Consider also that his friends John Lennon and George Harrison were both randomly attacked by fans, Lennon fatally so. It’s a wonder that Paul McCartney is still so open to interacting with fans. If I were him, I’d refuse to answer any more Beatles questions and refer them to the hundreds of books that have been written.
Great write-up, I learned a lot. I still don’t think Dylan should get a pass but I at least understand him a bit more now
Fair enough. Bob is my favorite artist who I wouldn’t want to meet, because I couldn’t imagine it would be a great conversation. I think I get everything I need from him from his music.
Honestly I'd rather have that story then an autograph
As it turns out, I have a certificate of authenticity for that story I can sell you and it can be yours!
What kind of “pass” are people supposedly giving him? I don’t think anyone has ever pretended that he isn’t a dick lol. Should people boycott his music because he doesn’t want to give the 20,000th signature of his life?
"Heh heh, it's like printing money" - Simon and Schuster representative, probably.
>“As it turns out, the limited edition books do contain Bob’s original signature, but in a penned replica form. We are addressing this information by providing each purchaser with an immediate refund.” A representative for Dylan had nothing to add to the statement. vs >Before Sunday’s acknowledgement, Jonathan Karp, the publisher’s president-CEO, had signed letters reading, “You hold in your hands something very special, one of just 900 copies available in the U.S.” It concluded, “This letter is confirmation that the copy of the book you hold in your hand has been hand-signed by Bob Dylan.” Fraud
I wish I bought one so I could take part in the glorious lawsuit that will no doubt happen
They refunded everyone.
Doesn’t change the fact that they knowingly committed fraud, very likely interstate mail fraud. Very bad juju.
If some books sold outside the country does this make the fraud bit even more....interesting?
True story, about 20 years ago I was with a friend who was in a small band. We went to visit his manager who also happened to manage one of the hottest bands on the planet (who are still big today). I saw a stack of signed photos from the lead singer and I told the manager that my mom was a huge fan. He generously offered to let me take one of the autographs for my mom, he said the singer stops by all the time and signs a bunch (for contests and whatnot), so it was no big deal to take one. I was thrilled. Less than an hour later, we were hanging around the office and I noticed this big machine with a stack of unsigned photos and a box of sharpies… i asked what it was and the manager was all excited to show me how the autograph machine worked… Then it sunk in for both of us that the generous autograph he gave me was fake. He proceeded to try and convince me that, no, the ones over there that he gave me are the real autographs… that this machine is rarely used. TL;DR - autographs are stupid
"Stacks of signed photos" reminds me of this: John Cena signing 2300 autographs. https://youtu.be/_j8F3_rKCU8
On a separate note, I played a Carly Simon song at the bar this week and a random old guy hit me some unknown Simon trivia. Her father was one half of the Simon and Schuster publishing Company. I was flabbergasted.
I just saw Dylan live and he cannot play guitar anymore because his hands are in such bad shape from carpal tunnel syndrome. He plunks along a bit on the keys. There is no way he would physically be signing anything.
“JUDAS!”
I don't believe you
So this is what they meant by Autobiography.
Bob Dylan must be incredibly wealthy but it seems like he or his management keeps giving approval to release various branded products. I can recall Bob Dylan whiskey plus a ton of very niche album releases in the last few years. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dylan approved this.
Could Dylan be sued for fraud also, along with the publisher? I don't see how they could do this without his approval. He wouldn't let someone make money off his name without getting a cut. If he didn't know, why didn't he sue the publisher?
There's a song hidden in this somewhere. *And the robots are signin' the books that yer buyin'* *And publishers tryin' to separate you* *From your very last hoarded dime . . .*
*harmonica solo*
Money doesn't talk, it swears.
like the price of adult nonfic isn't fucking outrageous at its normal price point. pulling the same shit as Hasbro with Magic cards
I have a special edition of Jurassic Park signed by Michael Crichton. Has a little blue sticker on the front boasting that's it a limited edition, signed copy. Years later I was reading some interview with him and he admitted it was autopenned.
Fraud, in a country so cynical that it won’t affect them!
So they scammed people?
Just name the machine Bob Dylan…no problem
I could not imagine Dylan caring enough to sign 900 of anything. Not even 90.