This Bespells Doom ...

One of the problems with ebooks is - you can't get authors to sign them at book events. Or can you?

Apparently David Sedaris signed a Kindle at a reading from When You Are Engulfed in Flames at the Strand bookstore in Manhattan :

A man named Marty who had waited in the book-signing line presented his Kindle, on the back of which Mr. Sedaris, in mock horror, wrote, “This bespells doom.” ... Mr. Sedaris wrote in a recent e-mail message that he has actually signed “at least five” Kindles, and “a fair number of iPods as well, these for audio book listeners.”

The strangest thing he says he has signed though was :

... a woman’s artificial leg ...

A Signing of the Times?

US bookbuyers seem to expect that a copy comes complete with author autograph and a while ago I blogged about Rushdie et al competing for the record of fastest book signer in the world. While it was amusing, there was a little voice in my head that said should an author really be spending precious writing time (hours and hours of it) on this, sitting in a warehouse wearing out the muscles in his/her precious writing hand?

Am much tickled by the news in the Guardian that an American publisher is looking to recruit a team of part-time workers who can forge the signature of millionaire best-seller writer (no-one knows who) for a fee of US$25 for 200 books signed. (The original ad is reproduced in Gawker which discovered the scam.)

And of course the article slips in a mention of authors who have found clever ways around turning up to bookstores for signings - Atwood with her longpen and JT LeRoy :

herself a fake, employed a co-conspirator to sit in her place at public events.

Postscript :

John Walsh shares his thoughts about book signing in the Independent.

His Record is Toast, Says Rushdie.

Don't challenge Salman Rushdie to a duel of the book-signing pen!

Wine writer Malcolm Gluck had the audacity to question whether Rushdie could possibly have signed as many books as he had claimed, or whether he had just scribbled his initials. According to Maev Kennedy in the Guardian :

Gluck's claimed record is 1,001 copies in 59 minutes, set at a wine warehouse in London in 1998. Gluck achieved this with the help of a team of three men, one fetching the copies, one opening them at the blank page, and another whisking the signed copies away.

Rushdie said he had signed 1,000 copies, on his most recent tour promoting the Enchantress of Florence, in a books warehouse in Nashville in 57 minutes.

A crack team of bookstore staff is apparently essential to facilitate the process and Rushdie is apparently right up there in the company of President Jimmy Carter, the novelist Amy Tan as one of the world's fastest book-signers. (Although the article adds that thriller writer Ken Follett could be a serious contender. He signed 2,050 copies in three-and-a-half hours at a book fair in Madrid earlier this year, beating his own record of 1,600 last year at a fair in Italy.)

Btw, I really wish bookshops here would get authors to sign stocks of their books when they are in town! The only author who did this as far as I know was naughty Nirpal. Peter Carey was the biggest one (as far as I am concerned) who got away.

There ... But Not There

If you want to sell your book, you have to promote it. But, it seems, the author's tour may be a thing of the past.

Ian McEwan is doing a tour of the US to promote his latest book On Chesil Beach. Only ... he's not going to be there himself.

Bob Thompson in the Washington Post reports that independent booksellers Powell's Books has come up with the idea of making a high-grade film (part of which is viewable with the article) of the author reading from and talking about his book, and of building events around that. McEwan's film will be shown at 54 other screenings around the country, mainly, but not exclusively in bookstores, with discussion being lead in some cases by other local novelists.

Wouldn't it be great if McEwan's film, and other author films when they are made, could be shown in bookshops here? We are so starved for author visits, and Malaysia is an awful long way to fly someone to read to us.

Another way for an author to appear without actually appearing is, of course, by video link. We enjoyed a run of those at the British Council a couple of years back when a tiny group of hardened bibliophiles were able to interact with Toby Litt, Beryl Bainbridge and David Lodge.

And nowadays an author can even sign books from half a world away by using the LongPen - (something I thought was a hilarious joke when Margaret Atwood came up with the idea!)

Which is how Norman Mailer (incapacitated by "age, asthma and athritis") will be appearing ... but not appearing ... at the Edinburgh Festival this year and signing books for his fans. And Atwood will be interviewing (again by video link) legendary Canadian short story writer Joyce Carol Oates who will also sign books.

In fact a whole list of famous authors have used the LongPen saving (as the promotional website for the device reminds us) over 30 million tons of carbon emissions!