Here's a letter I received the other day from someone who obviously is among the billions on this planet who no have real idea who I am or what I do, nor do they care…
And I'm not saying he should; merely that he's clearly fibbing to pretend he does. I get one or two of these a week lately, leading me to suspect some autograph-collector site published my address and that it said something about me working in cartoons or comic books. That led him to the erroneous assumption that a little sketch by me might at least be worth what he spent on postage to send me five index cards and a stamped return envelope.
Usually, the signature-seekers take the time to at least Google your name and drop in one line to personalize their requests…like instead of saying "I very much respect the work you do," they'll amend the prepared text to say, "I love watching The Garfield Show." The person who sent this letter couldn't even be bothered to do that.
Another guy in comics who gets way more of these than I do told me once, "I used to sign and return a card if they only sent one of them. I figured maybe it is a true fan who will treasure it. But then I saw even those turning up on eBay so now I just toss the request in the trash. If I can peel off the stamp, I keep that and use it."
I don't feel good about tossing the requests and I don't keep the stamps. I just don't know what else to do. Past experience has told me that if I do sign the cards and send 'em back, the recipient will rush to the chat boards that cover this kind of thing and report that the address is valid and I do respond…and I'll get twenty more.
I've learned that and I've also learned one other very important thing: Don't leap to the conclusion, however tempting it may be, that just because someone asks you to write your name on something, that makes you important or famous of anything of the sort. In a way, I kinda like getting letters like this because they remind me of that.