One of the important differences between e-books and paper books is that it’s a lot easier to autograph paper books. However, that’s in the process of changing. The New York Times has an article about Autography, the autographs-for-e-books system we mentioned in November and again in January. The system has been improved a touch since we last mentioned it, incorporating the on-board camera of the iPad 2.
Autography involves using the iPad or an external camera to take a picture of the author along with the reader getting the autograph, then the author signs on the screen with a stylus and sends the reader an email with a link to the image that can be downloaded into the e-book, and shared on social-networking sites.
Rachel Chou, chief marketing officer for Open Road Integrated Media, suggests that within the year e-books will be sold with blank pages for the purpose of incorporating autographs, and and various other advances to support autography. Sony Reader already allows authors to sign with a stylus.
Of course, the original e-book autograph function was an easter egg of the old Peanut/Palm/eReader app for the Palm, in which scrawling “AU” on the graffiti pad would allow authors to scribble a signature on the screen which would be incorporated into a (DRMed) eReader book as a bitmap image. As far as I know, it was hardly ever used, and didn’t make the jump into other versions of the app.
Even so, Ms. Chou suggested that not all readers care about autographs. “We’re struggling with the idea: is it about the autograph or is it about the takeaway that you met that person?” she said. In an age of “look at me!” status updates, she thinks it’s the latter.
I think there’s something to that. I know I value my autographed books more as “proof” that I met and interacted with the person than as objects in and of themselves. That’s why I always have the autographs personalized. And in that light, the idea of incorporating a photograph into the e-book autograph (and making it socially sharable) is a very clever idea.
Autograph signing is an important ritual in the literary world—a way for authors to interact with readers, and for readers to demonstrate and commemorate that they’ve met the authors. In that light, when you get right down to it a digital method was really only a matter of time. It’s probably still got a ways to go before everyone is using it, however.
