Authors finding digital readers want their Kindles signed

Andrew Bennett is fast gathering a collection of signatures from his favorite book authors. Just ask Bennett, and he'll proudly show where authors scribbled their autographs with a Sharpie - on the back of his Kindle.

Just as rock fans have long flocked around musicians to have their t-shirts or body parts signed, digital book devotees are showing up at book signings to have their digital doodads autographed.

Bennett, for one, no longer buys actual books with paper pages, so this is all he has for authors to sign. "I bought a special cover for my Kindle," Bennett said. "To protect the names from smudging."

This may all come as a bit of a surprise to designers of Kindles and other digital readers.

The back of the Kindle is a slick, brushed aluminum plate. Even a permanent marker signature can eventually wear off. But devoted readers are working around minor problems like those. And signing a Kindle, Nook or other gadget is fast becoming a quirky ritual that breaks the ice in what can be an awkward moment when author and reader meet in person.

On one side of the signing table are the authors, who worked for months on their books, then spend months more on the road promoting themselves, greeting readers and stirring up buzz about their books.

Horror and thriller writer Scott Sigler thinks he may have done more than 40 signing events over five months last year to promote his latest work "Ancestor," about a renegade biotech firm trying to breed proto-humans to harvest organs.

"You get people of all types across the board, from casual to hardcore fans," Sigler said. "Whether they hand you a Kindle or Nook, a book or just a napkin from a bar - that action of signing something specifically for that person - that's their trophy. They think 'Not only do I read this guy, I got to meet him.' And they go right out and show other people."

Sigler takes a personal thrill in the weirdest things people want signed - instead of actual books.

For instance, a set of meat scissors play a crucial and gruesome role in his book "Infected," as the main character struggles over whether to cut off an appendage that's infected with a kind of virus from outer space. Now, Sigler said, readers show up at book signings with meat scissors for him to sign.

So signing a Kindle doesn't rank as especially strange for him.

For readers, the book signing event is their chance to meet a bona fide personal hero.

Computer programmer Brian Ferrell has been a fan of science fiction author and icon William Gibson for decades. Then he found out Gibson would be signing books mere blocks away in Ferrell's San Francisco neighborhood.

"You were supposed to buy a book from the store for him to sign," Ferrell said. "But I asked them if I could just bring my Kindle instead, and they said OK."

When the moment came, Ferrell asked Gibson if he'd ever signed a Kindle before. "You're definitely in the minority," Ferrell recalls Gibson saying. But it was altogether appropriate, as Gibson is revered in the tech community as the futurist who first came up with the term "Cyberspace." A gadget like an e-reader, Ferrell figured, epitomized technological progress.

"For me, it's about the words, not the format," Ferrell said. "So as soon as I got the Kindle, it was special to have him sign it, as the imaginer of all these future technologies that have now become common."

There are a few other, novel ways for fans to get their autographs.

Some e-book cover companies now have slots in the covers where readers can have authors sign. Sigler said his readers will often mail him a plastic cover for their e-reader for him to sign and ship back.

One start up in St. Petersburg, Fla. called Autography is marketing a purely technical solution. Authors can use a touchpad like an iPad to write notes to individual fans, and the image is instantly inserted as a virtual page in the reader's copy of the e-book. That innovation won first prize at the recent "Digital Show and Tell" conference, put on by the book industry in New York.

Founder and book author T.J. Waters said their next-generation of the service will let authors host video-chat book-signing events for fans, and the author signatures and copy of the e-book arrive in moments on the fan's e-reader.

Taking the idea a bit further, Barnes & Noble now sells a cover for its Nook with re-created autographs from authors like Oscar Wilde, Walter Mosley, Leo Tolstoy and Patricia Cornwell.

The only difference with some of those authors: Many cannot appreciate the shift from books to e-books, as they are no longer available for in-person autographs.