Did a famous English author just secretly sign his own books at a KL bookstore?

For most of you millennials out there, y’all probably love spending time eating your avocados, sipping RM15 coffees and binge watching TV shows online right?

Okay don’t worry, we’re not here to poke fun at avocado-eating millennials. But if you are one who loves binge-watching on Netflix/Hulu/HBO/Amazon Prime, you might’ve heard of the name Neil Gaiman. He’s the author whose books have led to cult favorite TV shows such as American Gods, Lucifer, Good Omens and more (his books are pretty good too).

But why are we talking about Neil Gaiman anyway?

Someone found that his books were secretly autographed by him in a KL bookstore

Like omg wow. People normally have to wait for the chance to meet their favourite authors or celebs just to get a signature and a pic but for those of you who love Neil Gaiman, this must’ve been a huge find. And indeed it was, as according to the original poster Dan Izzy in the KL Book Appreciation Club, there were only 4 to 5 copies of the signed books left when he was at the Times bookstore in Pavillion. Plus judging from all the comments, many a booklover were envious of his find. Sadly, the comments did also say that there are no more copies with his signature on it anymore 🙁

Of course, not everyone has heard of or is a fan of Gaiman – this writer personally prefers reading Dan Brown – so here’s a quick TLDR of who he is.

Born in 1960 in England, Gaiman’s an author whose work includes short fiction, novels, comics, nonfiction and even the odd film project every now and then. His notable novels include American Gods, The Sandman, Coraline and The Graveyard Book. He was also involved in the movie Beowulf, while as mentioned earlier a number of his works have become movies and TV shows too. There’s also so many awards given to him that Wikipedia quite literally cannot show all of it, only listing a select number of them.

Now that you have a better idea of just how much of a superstar author this guy is, it perhaps begs the question: Why did he randomly sign his own books in a random KL bookstore?

He actually stealth signs his own books very often

Sorry Malaysia, turns out you’re not that special after all, cos here’s the thing: Neil Gaiman is known to secretly sign his own books whenever he can.

Edinburgh airport. Stealth-signed 3 books and then into the @WHSmith where they had a whole display of Norse Mythology. Signed them, obviously not stealthily enough as a helpful shop assistant pointed out the other books by me in the back of the shop, so I signed them too. pic.twitter.com/F0y5UsHxVy

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) August 6, 2018

He’s been doing it for years, most of the time at airport bookstores whenever he has the time. However, we couldn’t find any solid evidence that Gaiman was even in Malaysia recently, let alone have the time to hop on down to the Times bookstore in Pavillion to sign some books. So how did a bunch of books there end up with his signature?

Well one theory we might suggest is that these copies may have been unsold books from other countries. See, when a hardcover book that’s expected to sell doesn’t get sold, it apparently gets returned to the publisher. The publisher then decides what to do with the unsold books depending on the condition. If it’s still good enough to be put back on the shelves, then it may go back on the shelves of other bookstores.

Perhaps that’s how a secretly autographed copy of Gaiman’s new book ended up in KL? Or maybe he was here unnoticed and signed a bunch, who knows? (Neil if you’re reading this pls explain thanks)

And besides, another question one might ask is: are the signatures even really his? Well, why not you take a look for yourself and tell us what you think?

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

In our eyes at least, it does look pretty legit. We’ve also tweeted to him to ask for full confirmation. In the meantime, if you did manage to grab a copy of the signed book, you could tweet Neil Gaiman himself on Twitter too and he might just end the mystery once and for all.