Will you sign my Nook, Please?

POSTED BY prbythebook ON October 20, 2011

By Emily Southard-Bond

I’m a purge fanatic. Any move or spring-cleaning involves me loading up copious amounts of baskets and boxes to donate. I have a deep hatred for clutter and am particularly horrified by the sight of knick-knacks. And although I would love to someday build unique furniture out of used books, a la the couch in Paper Man, the most difficult boxes to pack are always the boxes filled with books!

Our most recent move I announced to my husband we needed to reduce our library to a meager 60 books-30 each being the goal. We would start to save paper (and our backs) by making a more concerted effort to buy electronic books with our Barnes and Noble Nooks, while ridding ourselves of unnecessary attachments to multiple copies of Vonnegut novels and Early American Poetry Anthologies.

While feverishly plowing through stacks of mandatory syllabi reads, books recommended by friends, books forced upon us by family, and books guiltily purchased before plane flights-my husband would ask, “What about this 1950’s copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People,” or pleadingly explain the reason behind keeping multiple copies of Saul William’s Said the Shotgun to the Head, to downright hiding Stephen King paperbacks in pillows! This was getting out of hand, rules had to be made:

1.  Did someone you love give this book to you and are they now deceased?

2.  Have you read it, or do you plan on reading it within your lifetime?

3.  Is it no longer purchasable on Amazon?

4.  Is it signed?

We never reached our goal. My husband completely ignored the rules (I even found a copy of an Umberto Eco book in a Le Creuset pot), but I held closely to one rule in particular. I realized that even if I wasn’t especially fond of a book, if it was autographed I’d move it anywhere with me.

For many book lovers the pilgrimage to another city or even to your local bookstore, where you wait patiently for your favorite author to pull out his or her felt tip pen, ask for your name and sign a copy can sometimes be more exhilarating than reading the actual book! We become attached to not only the words in the book, but also to the experience of meeting and occasionally connecting with the person who wrote them.

But what would happen to my rules if an author could whip out a stylus (an electronic pen that can sign iPads and eReaders) and sign my Nook? A barren bookshelf somewhere just shuddered.

Forward thinking authors and companies are now becoming hip to a new trend that follows right along with the increase in eReader sales and the decrease in paperbacks. The phrase “will you sign my ebook,” is being repeated in bookstores everywhere. A seemingly odd request, how does one even sign an ebook? Thanks to the Kindlegraph and Autography authors can now sign individual electronic books in eReaders and in some cases download a photo of yourself and the author, to then be sent directly into your eReader.

This isn’t like signing a cover of a yearbook with multiple authors searching for scribbling space. The signature is directly downloaded into whichever title you’d like signed. In some cases authors on tour will already have a stylus, and going a step further companies like Kindlegraph allow the reader to purchase an book with a personalized digital inscription already in the ebook. Imagine, how cool it will be to send your Dad an autographed copy of their favorite author for the holidays this year?

Does this decrease the value of signed books? I suppose yes and no. I wont be able to get Twain’s John Hancock on his autobiography (the first book I purchased with my Nook), but I will certainly show Palahniuk my electronic copy of Damned. And maybe in a hundred years people will be auctioning off collections of well-signed Kindles.

It looks like my husband better get ready for another purge.

Tags: Autographs, Autography, Chuck Palahniuk, eBooks, eReaders, kindle, Kindlegraph, Nook, Paper Man, Saul Williams, Stephen King, Vonnegut

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